


Falling Petals

by Skarla



Series: Tony's Robot Army [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers Family, Backwards Fairytale, F/M, M/M, Team Human, Tony's robot Army
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-06-28 17:50:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 33,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15712095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skarla/pseuds/Skarla
Summary: The Beast won his Beauty and was transformed into a Handsome Prince, but Fairytale endings aren't always what they're cracked up to be.When it all falls apart, Tony falls back on what he's always known. When he emerges, he finds that he has a new family to support him and a new purpose in life - overlord of his robot army.That lasts until they follow a lead to a Hydra shipping container and everything is changed again...





	1. October

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Iron Man 3 and follows the timeline up to that point.

_October_

 

Pepper's eyes smiled into his own as she lifted her graceful white hands to straighten his bow tie.  "You look fantastic," she murmured into his ear, her smooth cheek brushing against his in a parody of a kiss.  She was wearing a new perfume, it reminded him of roses.

"You outshine everyone else in the room," he told her, tucking one of those delicate hands into the crook of his elbow as he swept them into the room.  "I forbid you from dancing with anyone else.  You're mine."

He glanced sideways in time to catch her smile down at her ring, a sparkling teardrop diamond set in rose gold that he had given her the week before.

"I'll probably have to dance a few dances with other people Tony, you know that," she reminded him.

"No stuffy old men then.  Scratch that, only stuffy old men.  The younger ones might try to steal you from me."

Pepper laughed and warmth flared in Tony's chest.  He tried to make her laugh at least once a day, it was a promise he'd made to himself.

"You know if Captain America asks me to dance, it is my duty as a citizen of this country to say yes," she teased.

She was swept away from him as the night went on, as she always was.  He watched from the edge of the room as she swept through the crowd like a gracious queen, bestowing the light of her attention on all and sundry.  He nursed his scotch and pretended to listen to the conversation between the two senators he was standing next to, making agreeable noises when they remembered to include him.

He wanted to hide her away in the tower, have her all to himself rather than have to share her like this.  It was a selfish wish, he knew.  Unbefitting of a Stark.  His father would be ashamed of him, for wanting it.  For wanting a person to partner Tony, not Anthony Stark and all he represented.  Pepper was perfect, he knew that she was.  Brave and funny and frighteningly clever, her strength evident in all that she did.  It was no wonder that he didn't want to share her company with the world, but it wasn't all about what he wanted, was it?  It was about what she wanted and what the company needed.  Besides, no one else got to see her relaxed in cut off shorts that showed off her elegant legs, barefoot and carefree as they sipped champagne together.


	2. November

_November_

"Tony, what's all this?"

He wasn't expecting her in the workshop, she had stopped coming down there after he'd solved the extremis problem. Too many memories of tests he supposed, and she didn't have enough good memories of the workshop to level out the bad associations.

"Just tinkering, Pep. What do you need? Is that a new shirt? It suits you."

She was dressed up for a meeting in a fitted silk blouse with a green neck scarf and she looked ready to take on the world in dagger heeled shoes.

"Tony, I thought we'd talked about this, I thought we'd agreed? They were all destroyed, you were done!"

Tony looked down in confusion at the motorbike engine on the workbench and then back at his fiancée, tracking her gaze to the back corner where DUM-E had managed to knock one of the privacy screens askew, revealing the MK44.

"Ah. Well, I can explain…" only he couldn't explain, because he had known that this would hurt her and he had done it anyway. As an experiment in engineering, because he was bored, because he was scared, because he could, because he wanted to. Because, deep down, he didn't want to give up Iron Man, didn't want to make that sacrifice, even for her.

He hadn't actually used it, it wasn't even finished yet, he had a few more things to tweak and he was considering miniature deployable additions for JARVIS to control.

"Still waiting for an explanation Tony," Pepper reminded him. She looked about three seconds away from storming out of the door, and he was a tiny bit worried that she might melt something.

"I'm a terrible person and you're an angel for putting up with me?" he tried. "I'm sorry, I know I should have destroyed it-"

Pepper sighed and shook her head. "After all these years, I can tell when you're lying," she said, her tone shifting from angry to exasperated. He wasn't sure it was an improvement. "I'm not cross that it exists, I'm angry because there has clearly been a breakdown in communication here, which indicates a lack of trust. You didn't trust me with this, you went behind my back and tried to hide… I think you don't trust me to support you. And that means that I don't know what we're doing here, Tony."

"What?" Tony could feel his eyes widen as he realised that she was twisting her ring around her finger. "No, Pep, darling, light of my life, I trust you!" he promised, dropping the screwdriver he'd been clutching and rushing towards her with his hands outstretched. He skidded to a halt before his grease stained hands could touch her white blouse, his eyes fixed on her white skin.

A tear fell down her cheek as she pulled the slender ring from her finger. "No, you don't," she refuted. "You don't trust me with all of you. I… I thought I'd trusted you with all of me, but… this is not only your fault," she continued, looking him in the eye as another tear fell. Her hand didn't tremble at all as she held out the ring. "I've been selfish too, forcing you to choose the way that I did, I think, Tony, I think that perhaps this was a beautiful fairy-tale, too precious to be true."

"I don't like to be handed things," he muttered desperately, but she pressed it into his palm regardless.

She left him then, standing in his workshop, holding the ring and staring at the armour. He hadn’t realised that the life they had started to build together had had such fragile foundations. He had thought that perhaps he had finally cleared the red from his ledger, that the universe would allow him a small measure of happiness.

A soft distressed beeping broke through the cotton wool that muffled his head. DUM-E was frantically trying to nudge the screen back into place to hide the suit again.

"Too late for that," Tony muttered but the bot couldn't hear him, little servos whining with effort as it tried to move the screen.

"It's ok," he assured the AI, walking over and laying a hand on the robot's three fingered claw. "Actually, we can probably get rid of the screens now, hey? I know they were getting in your way. U! Get over here, help your brother move the screens to the rear wall, ok?"

U beeped an acknowledgement, unplugged herself from her charging station and charged over to help. "I'll be, um, over here, ok?"

Tony left the bots to it, collapsing on the sofa in the corner of the lab and fishing out a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet beside it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the sadness guys, I promise that there will be no Pepper-bashing in future chapters.


	3. December

_December_

Tony was quite proud of his new robot army, although he couldn’t quite remember making half of them. They all had rudimentary AI technology, and no two were alike. Some had obviously been created when he was further into the bottle than others, but as those tended to have the best personalities, he wasn't too worried.

They scurried around the workshop under the watchful eye of JARVIS, carrying out assigned tasks. A few of them had been let loose on the wider tower, cleaning the empty rooms and floors that he had built for the rest of the Avengers. None of them spoke the way that Jarvis did, but he had given them all voices, allowing them to chirp and beep and sound screeching alarms if they noticed something was wrong.

He'd decided to take all of them on a field trip to the main level to decorate for Christmas, and the saddest part was that he wasn't even drunk. He had slowed down around the fifteenth of December, as the antics of the robot army became more interesting than the fuzzy oblivion found in the bottom of a bottle. Now it was the twenty first, and most of the alcohol had left his system. CAL and NOO-TRI had taken over the kitchenette in the workshop, ordering groceries via JARVIS and doing their best to turn them into nutritious meals for him. DUM-E had taken a brotherly interest in the proceedings, after all his experience making smoothies for Tony back during the palladium poisoning incident.

They still burnt things 43.6% of the time, but their success rate had increased exponentially since their conception, and he had noticed a difference in his own health since he had awoken them 23 days ago. CAL had a digital display and she had used it to inform him that she wanted to make gingerbread cookies for Christmas. As the workshop didn't have a proper oven, just a burner and a microwave, he decided that it was probably time to leave the workshop and face the wider world - or the rest of the tower.

It had been 39 days since he had left the workshop.

The main level was empty, as he had expected, and spotlessly clean thanks to AJAX and SWIF-E. What he hadn't expected was the purple hoodie hanging on the back of the couch. "JARVIS, pull the storage pod marked 'Christmas Decorations' up to this level please, and give me a full access report for the last four weeks."

"At once Sir."

"Cheers buddy." Tony walked over to the access cupboard and waited patiently for the automatic retrieval system to move the pod from the storage level ten floors below and move it into position. Why have lots of storage in the room when he had the technology to move the storage to the room? One cupboard, 114 different storage pods. He called it the TARDIS - Tony's Awesome Robotically Delivered Internal Storage.

JARVIS displayed a short list on the wall at eye level and Tony frowned as he scanned it. "Barton has been coming here? And Romanoff?"

"Yes Sir, they appear to have taken up residence on the floors designed for them," the AI informed him. "As they have never brought guests with them, the internal alert subroutine was not triggered."

"Fair enough," Tony allowed, pulling open the cupboard as the light turned green and surveying the shelves of cardboard boxes. Pepper hadn't been big on his Christmas decorations, preferring to have colour themes and expertly arranged floral displays. Most of the decorations in storage were from the pre-Pepper days, bought together with Happy or Rhodey or the flavour of the month if he happened to be in a relationship around Christmas. He began to pull them out and hand them to his bots.

"Here team, get stuck into this. Put it everywhere, the trick is to make the room look like a cave of wonders. SWIF-E has the pack of adhesive hooks, use them carefully. All over the ceiling, all over the walls. There's a fake tree in here somewhere, NOO-TRI can look up a picture of how that's supposed to go. Or you can figure it out and have fun being your little creative selves. Go!"

Chirping with excitement, his army tore into the cardboard boxes and began to whirr around the room, trailing tinsel and knocking baubles everywhere. U found the tree, and began to attempt to construct it, DUM-E took over the task of hanging the foil streamers from the hooks SWIF-E was carefully placing at different heights around the room.

Tony sat back on the couch and watched the chaos, which was almost entertaining enough to distract him from the purple hoodie.

He knew from the log that neither of them were there now. They seemed to have been staying for a day, sometimes two days before leaving again for three or four days. They weren't always in residence at the same time.

"JARVIS, call Barton please."

Barton picked up after two rings, which meant that Tony needed to figure out exactly what it was that he wanted to say. Unfortunately, he had never done well when speaking under pressure. That’s why he'd always used cue cards, or had Jarvis print a display on his glasses.

"Stark, you're alive!" Barton sounded cheerful and slightly out of breath. "I mean, your AI said that you didn't want to be disturbed, so we assumed that you were ok and not bleeding to death in the workshop, but it's nice to have confirmation, you know?"

"Hey Katniss, so, um, it has come to my attention that you appear to be living at the tower."

"Yup, you invited all of us, remember?" Barton said a little more slowly.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, not a… it's just that it's nearly Christmas. And I'm, um, decorating. After a fashion. I didn't want you to be surprised. Have you met the robots?"

"The little cleaning guys? Yeah, they're great," Barton sounded genuinely enthusiastic and Tony found himself warming to the archer. "Wait, you mean the robots are helping? Man, I wish I was there to see that. I don't think I've had a real Christmas since… well, it's been a long time. And Nat has probably never had one."

"Will you be here for Christmas then?"

"Sure, this mission should be done in 48 hours, tops. Let's do dinner, show the Russian how it's done!"

"Ok, sounds fun. I'll have JARVIS order supplies."

There was a pause, before Clint inhaled sharply. "Um, just the three of us? Or were you thinking of making this a general invite?"

"Well, I didn't want it to be a party," Tony replied slowly, watching as U finally got the Christmas tree to stand unsupported. It still wasn't straight, but it was up. "But I guess we could invite the team, sound ok with you?"

"Yeah, sounds good," Clint replied straight away. Tony thought he detected a hint of approval under the obvious excitement in his voice. "Aww, man! I've got to get you a present now. Worse, I've got to get Nat a present! What do you get the billionaire who has everything?"

"Something that cannot be bought," Tony replied automatically.

"Got it, bye Stark! See you in 48 hours!"

There was a click and the archer was gone. And he needed to figure out presents.

"It seems that Christmas is officially happening," Tony told the bots. There was a moment of silence while the young AI's processed that, and then a chorus of delighted beeping rang around the room.


	4. Christmas

_Christmas_

Clint and Natasha arrived together fourty-two hours later, Clint looking exhausted but happy and Natasha holding herself stiffly with a carefully blank expression. They took in the glittering extravagant mess that the bots had made in the living room with wide eyes, but didn't comment.

Since he had let them out of the lab that first time, a number of his robot army had taken to rolling and tumbling around after Tony like a heard of mechanical puppies. Some were more sensible - DUM-E and U liked the workshop, and the cleaning bots were very diligent about their schedule. Others, ones created when he was heavily intoxicated he suspected, didn't seem to have much of a purpose at all. MAG, for example, read body language and was programmed to fetch 'comforting' things when she thought a person, or another bot, was upset. He was pretty sure that her original list had been copied from a website, but she had added to it and made substitutions once she found that certain items were not available in the workshop, and her choices only became more erratic once she was free to roam the tower.

MAG rolled up to Natasha and held out a pink microfibre cloth, beeping softly. Hesitantly, she reached out and took it. "Thank you." MAG beeped happily and rolled away.

"Stark?"

Tony shrugged. "She's trying to make you feel better," he explained. "I programmed her when I was completely out of my tree, and I think JARVIS had been playing videos of service dogs on youtube. Her name is MAG."

If possible, Natasha looked even more confused, but Clint was grinning. "This is awesome," he declared, dropping his duffel by the door and making a beeline for the coffee machine. "The cleaning robots were cool but this is even better. And I love what they've done with the place."

"It's oddly geometric chaos, isn't it?" Tony grinned waving at the tinsel and foil festooned room. "I'm so proud of them, I had almost no input at all. Wait till you see it with the lights off, it's Aladdin's cave in here."

Of course, once he said that Clint insisted that they turn off the main lights, put on the fancy electric fireplace and sit and drink coffee with a splash of whiskey while watching a Christmas film because 'it's traditional Nat, and you haven't seen any of them'.

Die Hard at first confused Natasha even more, but she seemed to enjoy picking apart the film with Clint and Tony. CAL made them popcorn that was only slightly burnt and Tony was charmed when both spies thanked her profusely.

"Thank you for inviting us into your home," Natasha said as the credits rolled. "I wanted to say something before but I didn't want to disturb you."

"It's nothing, Smurfette," Tony said, waving a dismissive hand. "I have so much room here after all."

"It's not nothing," Clint contradicted him as Natasha mouthed 'Smurfette?' to herself, obviously baffled. "Nat and I haven't had a place to call our own without someone looking over our shoulder ever."

"JARVIS is everywhere," Tony reminded them, wondering where on earth they were going with this topic of conversation.

"JARVIS doesn't count," Nat disagreed. "JARVIS is more like a cross between a very helpful housemate and a butler. And I know that he doesn't report anything that isn't a threat, we had some long conversations when we first arrived."

"Anyway," Clint said, brushing stray popcorn kernels from the cushions and grinning in delight as SWIF-E diligently hoovered them up. "We just wanted to say thank you. Neither of us made the best first impression on you-"

"Actually I thought Natalie Rushman was great until she stuck a hypodermic in my neck with no warning," Tony interrupted.

"We think that we could make a good team," Natasha explained. "And if you have time, we'd like to explore that with you. Train together, maybe try out a low level mission or two."

"Only if you have time!" Clint repeated. "We know you have a whole company to run and you're responsible for a lot of people's livelihoods, we don’t want… well, the world ending is one thing. This is more of an experiment."

"All the normal, highly trained genius types hanging out together?" Tony said, looking at the two spies. Now that the idea was in his head, their skills did overlap nicely. He was also touched that they remembered the rest of Stark Industries, something that Fury seemed to ignore except for when it became convenient for him. "I'm a bit more recognisable than the two of you," he pointed out.

Clint shrugged. "We either use that to our advantage or we disguise you."

"Ok, I'm in."

41 days since Pepper had returned his ring, against all expectations Tony found himself smiling and laughing as the three of them drafted up a training plan using the holographic display built into the coffee table.

***

The Christmas guests arrived on Christmas Eve. Rhodey had flown in from whatever top secret military base he had been living on, eyeing the robot army in resigned amazement (a look that only Rhodey could pull off) and giving Tony a suspicious look. Steve arrived on his motorbike, looking windswept and melancholy. Natasha picked Bruce up from the airport and everyone else carefully didn't ask where he'd flown in from.

CAL and NOO-TRI had wanted to make dinner for the team, and they'd been doing so well over the last few days now that they had access to the main kitchen that Tony didn't have the heart to say no. Natasha and Clint, both of who tended to re-heat rather than cook - were enchanted by the cooking bots. Well, Clint was enchanted. Natasha was slightly more reserved about the influx of robots into her life, so Tony was surprised to find her defending CAL to Steve when the super-solder made a disparaging remark about futuristic nonsense in front of the bot.

"She is doing her best, and she can hear you!" the red-head snapped, her voice smooth and deadly. "Apologise, Rogers, right now. If you're more specific in your request, she won't get it wrong. And thank her for the gingerbread cookies you've been inhaling since you arrived while you're at it, she made them."

Rogers was flushed and Tony couldn't quite tell if he was embarrassed or angry. He decided to stay where he was, mostly hidden behind a large potted fern that MAG had moved up from one of the SI offices. She had evidentially decided that there wasn't enough green in the communal area for their mental health.

"I… it's just a robot!" Rogers eventually protested, earning himself another negative point in Tony's mental ledger.

"She's an AI, artificial intelligence. She's only a few weeks old and she is doing her very best to learn everyone's preferences. It is easier for her if you are specific. You asked her for coffee, from the look of things you got Clint's usual order. It's not CAL's fault you were non-specific, so apologise to her!"

Rogers spluttered and Tony nearly gave into the temptation to move closer, but a sharp movement from the other side of the room stopped him. Clint and Bruce were standing in the opposite doorway, the former holding back the latter with a wide grin on his face.

"I'm sorry," Rogers said to Natasha, who pointed imperiously at CAL, who was sitting quietly by her side, her long flexible claw arms drooping with sadness. "I'm sorry," the blond said again, this time directing his remark and CAL, who perked up a little. "And thank you for the cookies, they're real swell." She projected something on her main screen - Tony couldn't see what it was but he could see the reflection of the light on the fridge door.

"Um, I like my coffee strong with a splash of milk and no sugar," Rogers said in response. CAL beeped an acknowledgement and rolled over to the coffee machine, presumably to start again. Tony heaved a sigh of relief and was about to reveal himself when he realised that Natasha wasn't finished.

"You're here for a few days, I suggest that you keep an open mind about the 'futuristic nonsense' surrounding you," she said sternly. "They are not dumb and they have feelings. Every one of them has a unique AI capable of learning. They decorated this room, which while a little random shows a level of artistic impression impossible for a computer program. The ability to create confers personhood, means that they are more than simple machines. Keep that in mind."

Steve stood in silence as Natasha turned away with her coffee and one of the gingerbread biscuits. Tony watched as Clint and Bruce backed up a few steps before walking forward noisily, capturing Steve's attention long enough for him to step aside from the plant and pretend that he hadn't heard the whole thing.

"JARVIS, does CAL have the ingredients for everything she wants to make us for dinner tomorrow?" he asked.

"The missing ingredients are on order and due to arrive at 3pm, Sir," the AI responded smoothly. "However, I might advise on reviewing the planned menu with her."

"What do you say guys?" Tony asked the rest of the team. "She's never planned a full meal on her own before. Would you prefer the surprise, or to have some input now?"

To his great surprise, it was Bruce who responded first. "I like surprises," he said wistfully. "Now they're usually not such a great idea. I think I'd prefer not to know. After all, everything will be suitable for human consumption, right?"

Clint nodded. "CAL is so afraid of giving us salmonella that the chicken she serves is either charred to a crisp or boiled within an inch of it life. I have never felt so taken care of by a chef before."

He blew the bot a kiss, and received a pleased chirp in return. CAL extended a silver claw holding a steaming mug to Steve before promptly whirling away to start making Clint coffee as a thank you.

"Thank you CAL," Steve said after taking a tentative sip of the coffee. "This is really good."

"Don't let NOO-TRI make you coffee," Tony warned him as he finally made his way to the fridge to get the orange juice he'd been craving. "Something went very very wrong with his code. He makes a fantastic one pan cooked breakfast and he can make tea, but his coffee is always terrible."

"Where is Noots anyway?" Clint asked, hopping up to sit on the counter while he waited for his thank you coffee. "I haven't seen him since yesterday."

Tony frowned around the kitchen. "I assumed he was charging, but that's a long time. J, where is NOO-TRI?"

"He is in the workshop Sir. I believe that the influx of people has overwhelmed him."

Tony blinked as he processed that. "He's shy? I made a shy AI?"

"I believe that to be the case, Sir."

"Holy shit Stark," Clint exclaimed. "I cannot decide if that is really cool or a little sad. JARVIS, does he need any company?"

"He is currently spending time with DUM-E and U."

"Best leave them to it, Katniss," Tony advised. "Let him get a little robot one on one time under his belt. Although later, if you wanted to come down, there are a few members of the robot army that you haven't met yet, and one of them might want to work with you on the range collecting arrows. I haven't asked him yet but he has the right grippers installed already and he likes to play fetch with DUM-E when DUM-E is supposed to be helping me. I was thinking you could be an alternative outlet."

"Have I told you today that I love living here?" Clint asked, grinning widely. He patted CAL as she handed him his coffee and took the last ginger biscuit.

"I like you living here too, birdbrain," Tony said, a little surprised himself at how true that statement had become.

***

Giving CAL free reign to make Christmas dinner for six people went just as oddly as Tony had expected it to. The bots had set the table and under the watchful eye of JARVIS were occupied in carrying all the dishes from the kitchen at once.

Bruce was eyeing each new arrival with amusement as the table got fuller and fuller. "I've never seen a spread quite like it, but it smells amazing."

"JARVIS, what is all this?" Clint asked as he sat down.

"Wait, don't tell us!" Tony called quickly. "Bruce wanted a surprise after all. Let's wait until the end of the meal and then find out."

Natasha was the last to arrive, clad in leggings and a soft pink sweater. She looked more relaxed than Tony had ever seen her, and when she saw the table her eyes widened. "Кутья! CAL, you made me Кутья ? Thank you!" She danced around U who was helping serve to give the bot three quick kisses.

Tony was feeling a little choked up himself when he realised that U was carefully carrying an impressive panettone, just seeing the distinctive shape made him think of the one Christmas he remembered spending with his mother's parents in Tuscany.

Rhodey was eyeing a colourful layered bowl with a sceptical expression. "It looks like a trifle but I'm pretty sure those a peas," he complained.

"It's potato salad," Natasha explained as she returned to the table. "Proper potato salad, not the strange dish that you Americans call by the same name."

"Sir, CAL has informed me that all the dishes are now on the table," JARVIS announced. "She asked if you would carve the goose, and Doctor Banner would carve the roast pig."

"I'd be delighted," Bruce said with a grin, picking up a large carving knife. "Who wants pork?"

Natasha was busy with the tureen of Кутья and Clint was eyeing the dish of brussels sprouts mixed with something white that Steve identified for him as roasted chestnuts with alarm. "J, did CAL make one dish for every country?" he asked as he sliced the legs from the goose and passed one to Rhodey.

"Not quite, the table was not big enough," JARVIS replied.

"I'm not trying it until I know what it is," Clint announced as Natasha put a small bowl of red stew in front of him. "Are those olives?"

"I think that's bacalao," Rhodey said unexpectedly, taking a spoonful for himself. "It's pretty good, you should try some with those potato pancake things."

"Such a weird combination," Steve commented as he neatly stacked the bones from his goose leg at the side of his plate and helped himself to a serving of pork. "But all of this tastes fantastic, my compliments to the chef. To CAL."

As the table followed suit, raising a glass to his creation, Tony felt a lump rise in his throat and wondered if all parents felt such bittersweet joy over the acceptance and achievements of their children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CAL's Christmas Menu:
> 
> Roast Goose  
> Cuban style roast Pork  
> Latkes - fried potato pancakes  
> Brussel sprouts with chestnuts  
> Czech potato salad  
> Bacalao - salted cod stew  
> Cranberry and apple gravy  
> Stuffing balls  
> Panettone  
> Кутья - boiled grains with honey and poppy seeds


	5. January

_January_

They start simply enough. Tony is always sent invitations to at least twenty New Year's Eve Parties, so after Rhodey, Bruce and Steve go back to their regular lives Tony spreads the invites across the coffee table and Jarvis projects the guest lists for the three of them to review.

"There are going to be at least three with interesting targets," Clint complained as he used an arrow he'd found under the sofa to scratch through names on the list.

"We'll just prioritise," Tony assured him. "Besides, if we pull this off smoothly, it won't be like we'll never have another chance. There will be other events that I'm invited to after all."

"I think the party that the Mayor is throwing might work best for us," Natasha said thoughtfully, smiling when JARVIS enlarged the list for her. "I don't know why they're there, but these three have ties to the Russian Mafia, and I think this guy has a Hydra connection. And this woman, and this one."

"We can certainly mingle and keep our ears open," Tony agreed. "Plus it won't be a bad thing to show favour for the Mayor, in case we accidentally destroy half of his city again."

"It wasn't half," Natasha sniffed. "It was barely an eighth. You Americans moan far too much. JARVIS can you please RSVP for Tony and a plus one?"

"Certainly Ms Romanov."

"Can you also hack the venue to find the staff uniform J? Buy one in Clint's size. And a chauffer's hat. Tatyana my dear, do you need a new dress?"

"That would be lovely, Mr Bond," Natasha replied with a wicked smile.

"She understood!" Tony crowed, jumping up to perform an impromptu victory dance. "J, mark this day for the calendar and buy Itsy Bitsy a pie."

"Forget pie, I want пиро́г (pirog)" Natasha smiled.

"There is a bakery on Neptune Avenue that has good reviews, I will place an order," the AI promised her.

Tony had never worked so seamlessly with a team before. He kept on second guessing himself, looking for invisible snags in the plan, but they simply weren't there. Clint and Natasha were experienced professionals, who nethertheless were happy to listen to and occasionally incorporate his suggestions. They worked well with JARVIS, and Tony was delighted when he found that his AI was incorporating skills learnt from observing the two spies into his already formidable repertoire.

New Years Eve was icy with a light sprinkling of snow in the afternoon. Natasha looked regal in a cloak trimmed with white fur over a black cocktail dress.

"I like the classics," she smiled when he complimented her. "I can't pretend to be a model, I'm not tall enough, so I thought I'd play Natalie Rushman for tonight. A few of the guests might remember me from Monaco."

"Is Pepper likely to be there?" Clint asked, fiddling with the silver cufflinks that came with the waiter's uniform. Tony waved him over and secured them for him.

"I ensure that Ms Potts was attending a different celebration," JARVIS interjected. "The invitation to the Mayor's was removed from her post cart."

"Who did you recruit for that little task, J?" Tony asked, finishing with the stubborn cufflink and turning his attention to his tie.

"MAG, Sir."

Clint started in surprise, jerking his tie out of Tony's hands. "What? The little 'feel good' bot? How? Why?"

Tony grinned. "J probably pointed out to her that if I saw her there it would upset me, and the easiest way to ensure that without hurting her feelings by asking her not to come was if the invitation never arrived." He readjusted the now loose tie and began to tie a St. Andrew knot.

"Precisely, Sir. Your limousine is in parking level 3."

"That's our cue," Clint grinned. He lead the way into the elevator, whistling once he saw his reflection in the mirrored wall. "I have no idea what you did Tony, but I almost look presentable!"

Tony held out an arm for Natasha, who tucked her fingers into the crease of his elbow without hesitation. "It's all about the presentation, Katniss. Never underestimate the effect of a decently tied tie."

"I prefer bowties," the archer retorted. "Less fabric to get in the way in a fight. I never get to wear them though."

"Why not?"

"They stand out," Clint and Natasha chorused, in what Tony suspected was an accurate impression of Agent Phil Coulson from the smile they shared afterwards; amusement tinged with grief.

"One day," Clint continued, suppressed longing obvious in his voice. "One day some big fish will have a party and he'll decide that all the staff have to wear bow ties."

"Tell you what, next time we're forced to do an Avengers thing for the press or for fundraising or whatever, you and I will both wear bow ties, ok? We'll make Capsicle look like the odd one out."

Clint stuck out his arm and they fistbumped on it as the doors opened to reveal parking level 3, empty apart from Tony's Lamborghini and the limousine.

A movement caught their attention, two guns and Tony's wrist repulsor were pointed at a shadow behind the Lamboughini in microseconds. There was a confused beep, and a small robot with rubber treads and a polishing cloth clutched in one claw peeked out from behind the car.

"FIX-IT, is that you?" Tony asked, deactivating the repulsor. It turned back into a sleek red and gold watch. A second, louder beep echoed around the empty parking garage.

"Sorry buddy, it's ok, you can come out."

Clint and Natasha slid their weapons back into hidden holsters and exchanged smiles. "Sorry FIX-IT, we weren't expecting you," Clint apologised to the robot. "Been getting the cars ready for the trip, huh?"

The bot beeped an acknowledgement, waving the cloth in the air.

"Limo looks great," Tony praised. "Can you go check on the oven door in the communal area please? I think it needs adjusting." The little robot whirred with excitement and sped off towards the service hatch next to the elevator doors, quickly disappearing into the wall. Tony opened the door of the limo for Natasha. "Let's get this show on the road."

***

The champagne was flowing, the lights sparkled, the guests glittered and corruption was rife amongst the upper echelons of New York society. Tony felt a little apart from it all, the champagne glass in his hand mostly for show. Natasha had stuck with him for the first half hour, but had split away to mingle with the men crowding the bar. He could see her bright hair surrounded by balding men in suits.

Clint was standing with a full tray of champagne glasses by a large potted plant, a practised vacant smile on his face. Tony was pretty sure that he was eavesdropping on the two Russian's having a conversation on the other side of the plant.

The man with a suspected Hydra connection was heading to the balcony, cigar in hand, so Tony drifted in that direction. He found him leaning against the railing as he fussed with his lighter.

"Allow me," Tony offered, pulling one of his own from his suit pocket. The man, Michael Armetta, mumbled his thanks as he puffed away like a steam train. He did a double take when he saw Tony's face.

"Mr Stark! Thank you for the assist."

Armetta was overweight and sweating profusely, beads of moisture collecting on his forehead under a receding hairline. Tony was glad that his aversion to handshakes was well documented at this point.

"No problem, hate to see technology fail a man," he said casually. "Makes it difficult to keep things in order."

Knowing the Hydra keywords was one thing, slotting them into conversation without sounding like an overblow movie villain was quite another.

Thankfully for Tony's sanity, the conversation was short, but peppered with enough keywords that he suspected that someone in Hydra would be excitedly reporting that Tony Stark was a sympathiser. He was as certain as he could be that Armetta was Hydra by the time he made his way to the bar to extract Natasha from her circle of admirers.

"How about a dance, Natalie?"

"Oh, I think I owe you one or two," she smiled, deftly slipping between two much larger men to slide her fingers into the crook of his elbow. "Thanks for the save, I was beginning to consider garrotting one or two of them," she murmured as he steered them towards the dance floor.

"I'm confident that Armetta is Hydra," Tony reported as they stepped into a waltz. "I put a little bug on his watch that will hopefully allow us to access his laptop, provided that he doesn't change the watch"

"If he does we'll just have to think of something else. Clint confirmed that the Russians are moving something into the country next month, something that's taken a fair bit of logistics planning to arrange and is causing disagreements."

"Think they're moving it for Hydra, for themselves or for a third party?"

"No idea. The fools that I ended up with were hinting about a new world order and choosing sides amongst themselves, but nothing concrete enough to move on."

"Still, we can keep an eye on the docks for the Russians and follow up with the Hydra lead. Not bad for an evening's work. I'm going to dip you now."

Natasha danced as gracefully as she did everything else, and moved easily, trusting him to hold her as he swept her back. "Not bad at all," she agreed. "It's nearly midnight, shall we pull a Cinderella?"

"Does that make Clint a talking mouse?"

Natasha laughed, and Tony grinned, pleased with his achievement. She had a nice laugh, and he resolved that he would do his best to hear it more often. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Пиро́г - Russian pie variant with a crust made from yeast dough.


	6. Feburary

_February_

The bug that Tony had managed to plant in Armetta's watch went quiet for several weeks, long enough that the three Avengers had given up on finding anything useful from it and were focussing on the Russian Mafia's movements through the City's docks. They were trying to figure out if they could infiltrate a poker game without exciting suspicion when JARVIS pinged quietly to interrupt.

"Apologies Sir, but I believe that you would like to know that the Armetta chip has accessed a computer system."

"Finally! I thought the guy had put it in a box and forgotten about it," Tony cheered. "What have we got, J?"

"It has allowed me to access a networked computer. I will project the file matrix for you now."

It didn't take them long to figure out that the computer didn't belong to Armetta, it seemed to be one of several terminals that were networked together. Tony and JARVIS worked quickly to get to the main servers and erase all traces of their presence, as far as they were able.

"I think this is some sort of Hydra bunker," Nat said, poking at a secondary display with less finesse than Tony, although she was getting results. Clint had given up on the holographic displays after his third failed attempt, he stood behind her and offered occasional suggestions as his sharp eyes scanned through the displayed text.

"That would follow, I seem to have a section on climate control here," Tony agreed. "Remember our Russian friends from the party? I have some shipping manifest copies and the timelines seem to match up, something was being transported by ship in a temperature controlled container. It's due to arrive at the docks tomorrow."

"I suggest we be there to greet it," Clint's grin was a little wolfish and Tony found that he was more excited than was perhaps reasonable at the thought of doing something that wasn't recon.

"I will leave a flag for SHIELD, to go off 2 hours after the container is due to arrive," Natasha said, pulling out her Starkphone. "We'll either be done or need backup by then."

"Doesn't it take a while to get the containers off the ship though? Tony asked. "Maybe we should set the 2 hour window once we know it's on the move."

Natasha shrugged. "JARVIS, the email that I have just drafted on a timer, can you control that please? One of us will verbally trigger the countdown at some point in the next 48 hours."

"Certainly Ms Romanov," the AI confirmed.

"Ok, let's go do the obstacle course a few times," Clint suggested. "We may end up running across shipping containers, we should get some practise in."

"Good idea. J, can you run some stealth gear through the fabricators please? And see if FIX-IT wants to assemble the new night vision goggles I designed, you know where the file is."

"He has said that he will be delighted to, Sir," JARVIS confirmed.

Clint grinned as he lead the way out of the room. "Have I mentioned today that I love the Robot Army? I love the Robot Army. So much cooler than anything SHIELD has ever had to offer."

"You bet it is Casanova. Luckily they love you too."

"I'm pretty sure that SWIF-E took personal offence to Steve, I don't think his room was swept once the whole time he was here," Natasha grinned like a satisfied Cheshire cat at the memory. "He should not have insulted your technology."

Tony shrugged. "Capsicle is just a bit of a fossil, not that I'm defending him. His personal skills sure could use a tune up, but at the end of the day it's up to him - to improve or not."

"Would you follow his lead if we end up fighting together again?" Clint asked. "He didn't do a bad job, but he's not exactly been getting to know us and our styles since."

"To be honest, I'd rather follow Itsy Bitsy here," Tony confessed with a sideways look at Natasha. "I acknowledge that there should be one clear leader in a battle, and that I'm not the best candidate for so many, many reasons, but at the same time I don't see why it needs to be Cap when Natasha is more than capable."

Natasha smiled at him. "Thank you, Tony. Now, shall we tackle this obstacle course as a team or race to the finish?"

"Three runs, one of each. One simple race, no contact allowed. One run where we're allowed to deliberately hamper each other, one where we work together," Clint proposed as the doors opened and they all made a beeline for their lockers.

"Sounds good, you're on!" Tony grinned, swapping his jeans for sweatpants and deciding to leave his T-shirt.

"Sparring rules apply boys," Natasha reminded them as she changed from ankle boots into trainers, her hair already pulled back into a ponytail.

Clint muttered something that might have been 'sparring rules are for sissies' but Tony couldn't quite catch it. He smiled to himself anyway, revelling in a feeling of belonging he hadn't felt since he and Rhodey had completed their last joint project at MIT. The Nazi bastards better watch out, because the three of them were going to kick ass and take names in 48 short hours.

*

The docks in February were absolutely freezing, and Tony found himself wishing for the suit. Still there was nothing for it, he'd destroyed the stealth version along with all the others in his big grand flop of a gesture. He made a mental note to try and find a better thermal lining for the flexible boots he'd had JARVIS fabricate as he flexed his chilly toes.

"I see movement," Natasha's calm voice sounded through his earpiece. "Looks like they're pulling that blue container first."

The boat had arrived precisely on schedule, looking like a ghost ship. After being met by the customs boat, it had drifted into a dock and just sat there with half its lights off. Tony hadn't spotted anyone come out to moor it up, but now there were signs of life on the deck.

A man, his face hidden by a swathe of black knit scarf, dropped a thin gangplank and slipped the mooring lines over the fat black bollards that lined the quay. Tony couldn't see the blue shipping container that Natasha referred to, but he stayed where he was. His perch overlooked the main exit path from the docks, there was a good chance that if they were moving the refrigerated container straight away they would move it past him.

"Got one of those massive container forklift things coming your way Widow," Clint reported.

"Copy. Iron Man, can you see a transport truck?"

"There are three in the carpark by the office, but no movement in that area so far," Tony reported.

"If one starts to move, I want to you execute 'Backseat Driver', ok?"

"Copy," Tony confirmed. He started to move to a position that would allow him to drop on the cab of any passing truck and primed a tiny short life EMP designed to make a truck stall temporarily. He'd had FIX-IT test it on the limo and it had worked like a dream.

After such a long wait, it didn't quite seem real when the remainder of the mission was completed within fifteen minutes. Tony watched as a driver sauntered over to one of the trucks, fired the EMP as it passed him and was able to drop soundlessly onto the roof, flattening himself behind a bit of aerodynamic moulding.

The container was loaded on and the truck began to trundle towards the exit.

"Diversion in 3… 2… 1," sounded quietly in his ear.

The truck driver responded beautifully, leaving the vehicle running with the door wide open as he gaped at the explosion that ripped into the air from an empty dock a few hundred meters away. Tony slipped over the edge of the roof into the drivers seat and was halfway out the gate before the man even thought to turn around. Clint knocked him unconscious before he opened his mouth to sound an alarm.

"See you back at the tower, Hawkeye," Tony grinned as he clipped his seatbelt and cranked the heater to blow warm air on his frozen toes.

"We'll probably beat you back at this rate," Clint said cheerfully. "Just a few loose ends to tie up."

"No chatter on the coms," Natasha chastised them, grunts and the soft slap of leather on skin sounding through her earpiece as she tore through Hydra goons with her usual graceful efficiency.

JARVIS had cleared the loading bay of Stark Tower for Tony and had the reinforced entrance to basement 2 open. Tony drove straight in - he had no intention of dumping the truck somewhere for Hydra to find. The truck would be dissembled by the Robot Army and, piece by piece, fed into the fabrication machines to be upcycled into new inventions.

"I have wiped all footage of the truck leaving the docks from the city's CCTV network, Sir," JARVIS announced as he put the vehicle in park. "I replaced it with footage from the same night last week."

"Should be good enough, thanks J," Tony grinned. "Are Nat and Clint back yet?"

"They have just entered through the pedestrian entrance on the ground floor, shall I direct them to this area?"

"Got it in one J."

Tony stared at the shipping container. It wasn't one of the big ones, he'd estimate the total length at 20ft. Now that the truck engine was off he could hear a low hum, which was presumably powering the refrigeration unit. Basement 2 was almost empty, just a few crates stacked against the back wall. The walls, floor and ceiling were all reinforced and the entire area could be locked down and flooded with knockout gas. There were automatic weapons behind concealed panels in the ceiling, controlled by JARVIS. All in all, it was the best place Tony had if you wanted to open a mysterious Hydra box.

"JARVIS, scan for life signs."

"There is nothing conclusive, sir. There is a great deal of interference."

The door at the far end opened and closed with a clang that echoed a little behind Clint and Natasha. "Come to join the party?" Tony asked cheerfully.

"Ready and willing," Clint grinned. "I take it this room is reinforced?"

Tony nodded. "And armed," he elaborated, pointing at the steel panels that hid the guns.

"Then we might as well get started." Natasha climbed up on the back of the truck and prepared to open the door, Clint and Tony angled themselves a few paces back from the trailer, weapons ready.

The redhead rolled her shoulders, and snapped the locking mechanism open as fast as she could before tugging at the door and diving into a graceful roll off the side of the truck bed, getting herself out of the line of fire as quickly as possible. Tony and Clint braced themselves as the doors swung open, releasing a cloud of white mist that waterfalled over the side of the container.

"Huh." Clint lowered his bow. "Ok, tech-genius. What the hell is that?"

Tony clambered up onto the trailer to get a closer look.  The inside was a mad inventor jumble of steel reinforced cables and thick black rubber piping, blinking control boxes stacked haphazardly around a large metal cylinder. "Soviet-era technology," he observed. "Some sort of power unit and condenser set up, powering whatever that metal tube thing with the glowing screen is in the middle. I think it's a freezer of some sort."

"The dragon's breath that poured out when I opened the door would support that theory," Nat pointed out, coming up behind him. She reached up to wipe hoarfrost from the backlit glass panel.

"Weird place for a computer screen, guess they're all giants," Clint joked

"Охуе́ть," Natasha spat, wiping the slush coating her hand on her thigh. "This changes things."

Tony peered up at the glass. "Is… is that a man?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Охуе́ть- I wanted a Russian exclamation and I believe that this has roughly the same connotation as 'what the fuck'.
> 
> If you're enjoying this story, please check out my original novel My Great Escape on Amazon, published under the name Kirsty Olliffe. I've recently submitted a new front cover and it's looking awesome right now. If it doesn't sound like your sort of thing, please consider helping a struggling writer and buying it for a relative next time you need to come up with a present.
> 
> Sending virtual hugs and internet cookies to all!


	7. March

_March_

The Robot Army took charge of removing the cryofreeze pod and its attached components from the shipping container. They spread everything out in a neat semi-circle behind the pod, leaving enough room between all the different junction boxes and control units for FIX-IT to roll up and down.

Tony led the way back upstairs, where NOO-TRI had hot chocolate with marshmallows waiting for them. She brought the drinks to the sofa on a metal tray that Tony recognised as a prototype of the Captain America shield, and she only slopped a little.

"Great jot, Noots," Clint saluted her as he took his mug and she beeped happily.

"It is appreciated," Natasha smiled, looking down at the light scattering of cinnamon across her marshmallows.

"Ok, Mata Hari, mind filling us in here? The dude looked vaguely familiar to me, but you seemed to recognise him."

"He is Зимний Солдат, the Winter Soldier," Nat said solemnly. "The best and most secret assassin the world has ever known. He trained me when I was a girl, and then they froze him away again. I think that they played mind games with him, as they did with me. He is a legend."

"I'd like to have a sniping contest with him," Clint enthused. "Almost as much as I'd love to have a sniping contest with Bucky Barnes, only I might actually get a chance to go head to head with Mr Freeze."

Tony felt puzzle pieces slotting together in his head as the nagging sense of familiarity suddenly crystallised into certainty. "JARVIS, pull up a picture of Sargent James Barnes."

"What's wrong?" Natasha asked, frowning. "I don't-"

She fell silent as they all stared at the image JARVIS projected onto the coffee table. After a second, he pulled the security feed from Basement 2 and placed the two side by side.

"Well shit," Clint sighed. "Guess wishes really do come true."

"We should not tell Steve," Natasha said, sipping her hot chocolate. "We do not know if we can safely wake him up. If we do, he may not remember. The man I knew was Russian to the bone, when he was anything."

"Wait, we have to tell Steve!" Tony protested. "This is his best friend!" He thought of the picture that had hung in his Father's office, of Steve and Howard and Bucky standing together around Steve's motorbike, Howard and Steve laughing at something Bucky had said. The sniper had had an easy grin on his face, one hand resting lightly on Steve's shoulder as the super soldier balanced precariously on the bike. The ease and friendship had been obvious, and Tony had always hated that photo. He had been jealous, that he had never had a friend like that - until Rhodey came along, ten years too late. It was time for him to give up that old jealousy and give Cap his best friend back and-

"Tasha is right," Clint chimed in unexpectedly. "The man's been brainwashed, and in the hands of Hydra. We all know how they fell about Captain America. It's safest to wait to tell him until we know where Barnes is at. Besides, part of me thinks that Barnes should have a say in it - we should figure out how to defrost him and ask him first."

Tony grit his teeth and nodded. He knew that he wasn't exactly thinking with his head, and he had no intention of messing things up with Clint and Natasha the way he had with Pepper. "JARVIS, has FIT-IT got anyway with the equipment yet?"

"The cryo-pod has both a management system and a log. FIX-IT is confident that we can safely defrost Sargent Barnes. He has forwarded the log to me, it is extremely rudimental."

The AI projected a document on the coffee table, replacing the two images. Clint was the first to lean forward, Natasha seemed preoccupied with her hot chocolate and Tony was still processing the implications of thawing the Winter Soldier and trying to mentally calculate whether the cryo-pod and all ancillary equipment would fit in the Hulk containment suite.

"This is pretty basic, but it gives us the dates," Clint announced. "And login codes, which don't seem to have changed that often, there are only four different codes here. Guess he was a secret even within Hydra a lot of the time. JARVIS, can you take these time periods and match them to assassinations or important dates please?"

"Of course, Agent Barton. The analysis may take me some time."

"That's cool, ping it to my email when you're done please."

"Sir, FIX-IT has located some loose papers, it did not look like they were officially stored there. I believe they should be reviewed by Agent Romanov."

"Scan them in and send them to my tablet please."

Natasha deposited her empty mug of hot chocolate on the coffee table and headed towards her room.

"This is going to be hard on her," Clint said quietly once she was out of earshot. "She's mentioned him a few times, the Winter Soldier. I've never had the full story from her though, but I think it was pretty grim."

"Her whole childhood was pretty grim," Tony pointed out. "But… yeah. I think this is going to be tough on all of us, it hits a different trigger for everyone. We just have to play it as a team, bolster each other's weak spots and we can get it done."

"And to think Nat once said that you don't play well with others," Clint grinned at him. "She's not often wrong, but I think she was this time. I'm quite enjoying being on a team with you, and not just because you have upgraded all of my equipment down to my underwear."

Tony didn't quite know what to say about that. He opened his mouth to quip, and then closed it again, knowing that Clint had been serious and if he joked about it he would cheapen the moment. He wanted to refute what the archer had said, but his mother had been firm when teaching him that he couldn't deny others their right to an opinion, even when they were obviously wrong. Thinking of his mother gave him the answer, after all there was only one way to respond to a compliment.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome," Clint replied cheerfully. "More hot chocolate? I don't think you're at risk of not fitting into the armour just yet."

"Sounds great."

*

48 hours later, they were ready. Natasha had translated the papers they had found, which had turned out to be a jumble of instructions for the cryo-pod, trigger phrases and a three pages torn from what looked like a diary that Nat had refused to translate. She had given them a summary instead, and it had been enough to give Tony nightmares.

They had moved past pity for James Barnes after the first day, and were now all existing in a state of shocked awe that anyone could have survived what he had. They had a better idea of what they would find when they opened the cryo-pod, and even the thought was enough to make Tony's stomach churn.

A mindless puppet. An obedient drone, programmed to obey. A shattered, broken man with a core of strength so solid he had to be electrocuted every 96 hours to prevent it from shining through.

MAG had been given the task of making a 'safe space' within the basement for Barnes to wake up in. She had carefully brought down all the plants from the tower lobby, much to the confusion of the reception desk team, and arranged them like a little oasis around a cracked brown leather sofa that Tony had never seen before. He didn't quite dare ask where she had got it from. Next she started bringing down mirrors, and leant them against the plant pots in such a way that a person sitting on the sofa could see any part of the room. She also carefully displayed a number of weapons on a side table, but Clint had confiscated most of them, much to her annoyance.

After a heated discussion between Clint and MAG with JARVIS translating, Clint had conceded and returned the sniper rifles, minus the ammo. He kept the knives.

"We're doing the right thing," Natasha said right in Tony's ear. The inventor attempted to turn his startled flinch into a casual turn to look at her, but suspected that he had failed from the way her eyelids crinkled. He turned back to the cryo-pod, where Barnes stood, suspended in ice.

"That was never in doubt. No one deserves to be left in the hands of Hydra. He's broken a record, you know? Longest surviving prisoner of war."

"I have something to tell you, before we wake him up. It might… it might change your mind."

"I already know," Tony told her, focusing on Barnes's face. "I have that particular date seared into my brain, I was going to notice the correlation in the log. It's ok. You don't blame the gun for being fired."

"You're taking this better than I expected."

Tony shrugged, and wished that he was holding something. He slipped his hands into his pockets instead. "He knew that he was a target, he knew who he was pissing off, but he was an arrogant man. You know I was kidnapped multiple times as a child? All due to his arrogance, because he thought he was untouchable and refused to let experts review his security measures. Left giant loopholes all over the place. Anyway. Back on track. If I blamed Barnes, I'd have to blame Clint, and Bruce, or be a hypocrite. And that is one thing I am actively trying to avoid."

"All right." Natasha pressed her hand on his shoulder for a brief moment. "We're ready when you are, in that case."

Tony spun on the spot to look her in the eye. "Thank you. Thank you for… for making sure I knew. Not assuming that I did or hoping that I'd overlooked it."

Natasha frowned. "I know that you have had terrible friends in the past, but I am not one of them, Tony. This is not a conversation that you need to thank me for."

"Then thank you for being my friend. Really, I mean it. Ok, where's Clint? Let's get this show on the road."

"Agent Barton is in the communal kitchen, would you like me to contact him?" JARVIS offered.

"Yes, connect the intercom. Clint, my man, where are you? We're ready to get started."

 _"I know, but the defrost cycle takes a while, right? NOO-TRI is just making us some coffee and snacks._ "

"Don't let NOO-TRI make the coffee!" Tony and Natasha chorused.

" _Aw, shit, I forgot_."

"Ok, you're right, the defrost will take about an hour. We'll start without you, coffee and snacks sounds great."

" _I'll, uh, well, yeah. Noots and I will figure this out, not sure where CAL has got to. Hey, shall I make one for Barnes?_ "

"Probably best not give him caffeine straight away," Natasha advised. "Bring down one of the unopened water bottles instead."

" _Sure thing, Over and out_."

Tony looked down at the control panel that would trigger the defrost cycle and took a deep breath. "Here goes nothing," he muttered as he pressed it. Natasha peered up at the viewing panel, but other than a small red light nothing had really changed.

"I suppose now we wait."

To Tony's surprise, she sat down in a lotus position directly in front of the cryo-pod, and closed her eyes. "Are you meditating?"

"Shh. It does not work if you talk to me."

Tony rolled his eyes, and wandered over to where multiple members of the Robot Army were dismantling the truck under the leadership of U. Most of them were not robots that he had designed to take things apart, but he appreciated the way that they were rising to the challenge. He stood back and counted two security bots, SWIF-E, an aerial drone that he had designed to carry things around the lab for him called ACE, FIX-IT and three tiny robots about the size of a chihuahua that resembled overgrown spiders. He didn't remember creating them.

"Hi guys! Where did you come from?" he asked, crouching down. The closest one beeped, and the other two came running. They swiftly assembled into a larger robot that he did recognise. It was one of the creations from the week after Pepper had left, and he wasn't entirely sure what he had been thinking. Something about Transformers or Power Rangers perhaps. He hoped that it's little AI brain was ok and not full of programming glitches.

"Wow. I do not remember designing you to do that. Go me, that's awesome. Are you all having fun?"

He was answered by a chorus of beeps. U waved an oversized mallet at him from the other side of the truck.

"Fantastic. Ok, guys. We're waking up a new human, and we're not sure how he is going to react to anything, so I want you to keep your distance for now, ok? The last thing I want is for any of you to get hurt. If he talks to you, you can respond. Soft beeps to alert him to your presence might be an idea, and check with JARVIS before doing anything, ok? We're not sure where he will be living just yet."

The robots chirped their assent, and went back to dismantling the truck, apart from one of the two security bots. He had created six of them in total, they ran on rubber caterpillar treads and had facial recognition software to enable them to identify residents and known allies. They also had six extendable claw arms that they could use to restrain intruders while JARVIS sounded the alarm.

This one had three arms looped around his calf and was leaning against him making a soft whirr like a purring cat. Tony looked down at his leg and decided that communication was probably a good step. He'd designed the security bots to be able to talk, even if he had given them a limited vocabulary.

"Are you ok down there? Do you need anything? Change of job description?"

#Positive. Acquisition of necessary comfort complete. No job amendment required#

"Aw, you just needed a hug? That's ok. You're doing a great job. You're ROVER, right?"

#Affirmative.#

"Well, ROVER, keep an eye on the rest of them for me ok? Make sure that they don't hurt themselves."

#Affirmative.#

ROVER unwound himself from Tony's leg and rolled back to the truck, picking up a discarded screwdriver. Tony watched for a few moments more, pleased to see several different robots working together as a team to get the driver's seat out of the cab, before the aroma of fresh coffee drifted past his nose.

"I was contemplating drinking yours," Clint teased. The archer was sprawled across the sofa with his coffee mug on the floor by his head. "But then I figure that it wasn't worth it. Yours is on the left."

"NOO-TRI didn't make this, right?"

"He did, I supervised carefully and mine tastes ok. I think he's finally cracked it."

Tony picked up his mug and took a tentative sip. "Not as good as CAL's, but a definite improvement over the dishwater he served me last time. Seven out of ten."

"Shall I pass on your compliments Sir?" JARVIS asked.

"Go for it. How's the defrost cycle coming along?"

"I estimate that the container will unlock in fifteen minutes."

Clint grunted and rolled to his feet. "Best get our game faces on. Although there's nothing like seeing three sleep deprived coffee addicts slurping a brew to let you know that you're not in Kansas anymore."

"They don't have coffee in Hydra?"

"They run on hate, not caffeine."

They were not the longest fifteen minutes of Tony's life, but he felt that it came close. Clint and Natasha were still, but Tony had never been good at waiting and paced a quick lap of the immediate area to try and settle his nerves.

They had agreed that Barnes would see Clint first. It was likely that Natasha was known to him, and even though Tony hated to admit it, he knew that he bore a strong resemblance to his father. Either of them could elicit a negative reaction, so they were staying back while Clint took point.

The cryo-pod hissed as the seal cracked open and Tony hurried to stand in his designated spot. Clint heaved the metal door to one side and hesitated with his hands outstretched. "Uh… do I touch him?"

"I have no idea," Tony hissed.

"Try calling him by name, his real name."

"Uh ok. James? James Barnes? Can you hear me? Oh, hey, he's breathing. That's great."

Barnes coughed a little and opened his eyes. Clint took a hurried step back as he shifted in place, giving the other sniper room to climb out of the pod. His body language was relaxed, his eyes fixed on the floor, but Tony could see that his gaze was darting around, and eventually as the silence continued, he slowly lifted his head.

"Orders?"

Tony bit his lip at the hoarse whisper, but kept his feet firmly planted on the ground and trusted Clint. The archer tensed for a moment, but then relaxed again and shook his head.

"Nope, no orders. Would you like to sit down? MAGS made you a nice little area, got plants and a couch and mirrors. Want to see?"

Barnes obediently followed Barton over to the sofa area and sat ramrod straight, his hands under his thighs. Tony snagged two bottles of water from the pack Clint had brought down and walked over slowly, holding them out in front of him.

"Hi. I'm Tony, that's Clint," he introduced himself, crouching down beside the arm of the couch. Would you like some water?"

Barnes gaze flickered between Tony's eyes and the water bottles without a glimmer of recognition. Problem one overcome. He reached out hesitantly for the water bottle, but didn't take it.

"It's just water," Tony assured him. "I can take a sip first, if you want. I promise that I don't have cooties."

He was gratified when an expression other than blank acceptance passed over Barnes' face. A slight eyebrow crinkle of confusion, but he was calling it a win, especially as Barnes then twisted the top off of the water bottle. It was the first time Tony had got a good look at both his hands, and he had to bite his tongue hard.

"You, er, seem to have some metal fingers going on there. I'm an engineer, a mechanic. I'll be happy to take a look."

Barnes took a long drink of water and looked at Tony consideringly from behind a screen of tangled brown hair. "Not a hand," he said after a moment. He set the water down, and shrugged out of the combat jacket he had been frozen in.

"Holy shit that's epic," Clint breathed out. Tony was glad that the archer had said something, he was too busy trying not to babble like an idiot to come up with a decent response. Barnes had the most beautiful piece of obsolete engineering he had ever seen, and it seemed to be grafted into his skin, if the scars radiating up his neck were any indication.

Natasha chose that moment to walk closer. Barnes looked up and tilted his head to one side. "Do you remember me?" she asked casually, prompting a frown.

"No. Is… is that bad?" Barnes asked. His voice sounded like he had be gargling gravel, and Tony handed him the water he had set down.

"It's not bad," Tony assured him. "That's Natasha. Got it?"

"Tony, Clint, Natasha," Barnes repeated obediently. Tony throttled back his first response and pasted his brightest smile on his face.

"Great. Do you know your name?"

Barnes thought for a moment, then looked at Clint. "He called me James Barnes. It does not feel wrong."


	8. April

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my headcanon is that Bucky was wiped before being put away, and the supersoldier serum is healing his brain. He was rescued before he was programmed to take down Fury and Steve, he's been on ice for a while so he doesn't have any triggers implanted against the Avengers because the last time he was defrosted was in the nineties (Iraq war).

_April_

Tony had already suspected after reading the files that James Barnes was the strongest person that he was ever likely to meet, and it didn't take long for the man to prove it.

As the Hydra notes had indicated, after 96 hours the blank slate that they had rescued from the cryo-pod began to show flickers of personality, of preferences, of memory.

It had started with the little things. Once they had satisfied themselves that he remembered nothing, and was unlikely to hurt anyone unless startled (in which case muscle memory and instinct seemed to take over) they had invited him up to the communal lounge and given him the room next to Clint. He had worn the clothing they had found for him - mostly Stark industries branded t-shirts and sweatpants - and eaten whatever it was that CAL and NOO-TRI had prepared, chewing mechanically until his plate was empty.

Five days later, Tony had found him biting into a banana with an expression of disgust, refusing to throw it away and muttering that it was wrong to waste food even though it tasted wrong when Tony pressed him to toss the fruit in the trash.

Three weeks after defrost, James had abruptly become Bucky, gently teasing CAL as he taught her his mother's chicken soup recipe - Clint had caught a cold on a stake out and Bucky had instantly turned into a mother hen, insisting that it was the best thing for a sniffle and grinning from ear to ear when he found that they already had all the right ingredients. It was the first time that Tony had seen him smile.

A week after that the Winter Soldier had ghosted into Tony's workshop as he slept at his desk to wrap a woollen blanket around his shoulders and leave a glass of orange juice by his elbow. Tony knew it was the Winter Soldier because the note scrawled on a post it was in cryllic and the lab had been on lockdown as per his instructions. There was no way that Bucky Barnes had the skills to break in.

Six weeks after defrost, after the sixteenth CT scan, there was a new balance in the tower. Bucky was haunted but processing, had screaming nightmares but was well adjusted enough to seek out company after them rather than locking himself in his room. He befriended MAG, ROVER and U specifically, spent two hours before lunch in the gym and enjoyed reading in the afternoons while giving CAL and NOO-TRI suggestions on what to make for dinner. He accepted Clint's invitations to go head to head in the range, and declined Natasha's offer to spar, muttering something in Russian that had made her dart forward to kiss his cheeks and then vanish on a solo mission for two days.

*

Tony was surprised when he realised that he was finally comfortable with his new houseguest, which was of course when Natasha appeared in his workshop to say; "We need to talk to Bucky about Steve. Clint and I think it should be you."

Tony frowned at her. "Why me? I vote we talk to him together."

Natasha shook her head impatiently, red curls flying around her face. "He likes you best, he loves your crazy robots and messy workshop. Most of the books he's reading now are science fiction, not history. He spent the first month catching up with some world events that he missed - the periods he skipped over are telling - and now he's just reading for fun."

"Nothing wrong with that, we could all use a little fun. Or an outing, I've been cooped up in the tower for weeks now. I know SHIELD put the smackdown on Hydra at the docks after we left, but I had expected them to resurface by now."

"You're changing the subject, and I think there's a spring ball at a Senator's mansion that we should try and get into. It's next week, plenty of time to prepare. We're talking about Bucky."

"Ok, ok, I'll talk to him," Tony promised. He checked his watch, and was surprised to find that it was 11am already. "I'll go find him at the gym."

"Good. No point in putting things off," Natasha said approvingly. Tony didn't dare tell her that the only reason he wasn't putting the conversation off indefinitely was because he knew that she wouldn't let him get away with it.

As per his new schedule, Bucky was indeed at the gym, lifting weights while JARVIS played him an eclectic mix of music from the past five decades.

"Disturbed covered this one, you should check it out," Tony called over Simon and Garfunkel. On cue, JARVIS changed the track and Bucky grinned his thanks as he finished his set.

"I think I like that version better. Did you want to talk to me? There isn't usually anyone in the gym at this hour."

"Yeah, Nat has decided that it's time to broach a topic, and she figures that I'm the best one to do it. I was going to go on the treadmill for a bit, care to join me?"

"Sure." Bucky lifted the weights back onto their rack and wiped at his face with the hem of his tank top, revealing a large silvered scar down his side and a flash of defined abs. Tony quickly focused his gaze at the treadmills on the opposite wall of the gym.

He set an easy pace, wanting to be able to talk and run at the same time without huffing like an out of shape gym teacher. "So, uh, it's about Steve. You know he's alive, it was part of the briefing pack so of course you know. But you read that when you weren't really you yet, and you are very much you now, so we were wondering if you wanted to perhaps revisit the topic."

Tony listened to the thud of their feet on the rubber belt of the treadmill and second guessed everything he had just said. He opened his mouth twice as he thought of ways to clarify or reword, but bit his tongue instead. In the past his attempts had done more harm than good, so this time he would just shut up and hope that silence worked out better.

"I had been avoiding thinking about Stevie," Bucky said eventually. "But you're right, no good will come out of that. At first I didn't want to flip my wig and… I dunno, say something stupid. If I leave it much longer I'll hurt him though."

"We don't need to give him specific dates if you don't want. Recovery isn't linear, after all, and it would be unreasonable of him to put a timeframe on you. But I can see why you're worried about that. Ok, want me to call him? Want to call him yourself?"

Bucky slowed his treadmill to a walk. "Can we call him together?" he asked hopefully. "I'd feel better if you were there with me. I've changed, Steve's changed… you know both of us. I'd sure appreciate it, Tony."

Tony smacked the button on his own treadmill, even though they'd barely run two miles. "All right, all right, turn off the charm Sargent. Go grab a shower and we'll call him from the workshop, then get some lunch."

"Sounds like a plan," Bucky agreed, hopping off the treadmill and throwing Tony a cheeky salute before jogging off towards the changing rooms.

"I may regret this," Tony muttered, half to himself and half to JARVIS as he followed suit.

*

By the time Bucky arrived in the workshop, freshly showered and smelling of oranges, Tony was sitting at his desk with a plan. He always felt better with a plan, and he hoped that Bucky would approve of his plan, because he was nervous enough without changing things at the last minute.

"So, I figured that I'd call him and explain that we found you, and then you talk to him. That way is less likely to give him a heart attack."

"Is this a telephone call or one of your fancy television things?"

Tony shook his head in mock sadness. "It's going to be a phone call, Steve's apartment is not set up for video conferencing, the technophobe."

Bucky nodded, then reached out with his metal arm and dragged Tony out of his seat. "No reason not to sit on the couch then," he reasoned as he dragged a preoccupied Tony across the workshop effortlessly. The arm was strong, and beautiful, and full of tiny motors that seemed to hum and whir in beautiful harmonies and it wasn't fair that the most intriguing piece of technology, that he had not personally created, that he had ever seen was attached to a similarly beautiful, slightly broken human being and Tony really needed to stop staring before Bucky noticed him drooling.

Tony looked up and realised that it was a little too late for that as Bucky was watching him with a strange expression on his face. If Tony didn't know better -and he really, really did - he would have said that it was fondness.

"Can you take a look at it for me later? The elbow is playing up a bit, and you mentioned at breakfast last week that you'd like to scan it to make up a blueprint to work from."

"I… can totally do that. Thank you."

Bucky's eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, Tony realised. "You're the one helping me, remember?" the former assassin teased him.

"Calling Steve now!" Tony announced in a desperate attempt to change the subject. He threw himself down on the battered leather couch that the bots had brought up from basement 2 and dumped in the corner of the workshop, and waited for JARVIS to connect the call. Bucky tucked himself sideways into the arm, resting his knees against the back cushions and chewing his lip.

"Don't be nervous," Tony said as they listened to the call ringing. "It's just Steve."

Bucky opened his mouth to reply, but at that point there was a click as Steve picked up. "Rogers."

"Capsicle, it's your favourite billionaire," Tony joked.

"Tony? Hey, nice to hear from you, it's been a while. Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, everything is fine. Uh, Nat, Clint and I intercepted a Hydra shipment that we think you should know about. Are you sitting down?"

"I can be. Is it that shocking? Oh my god, they didn't make clones of me or use my sperm to make children did they?!"

Tony spluttered a little bit and shared an incredulous look with Bucky, who was shaking his head with both hands over his mouth. "What? Why? No! Nothing like that."

"Sorry, it's just that I was watching this movie, and then I had a nightmare and… well, you know how it goes."

"Uh, I do. No, this isn't like that. This is good news. Um, I don't think there's an easy way to say this, but we found Bucky."

There was a loud thud and a shuffle as presumably Steve dropped his phone, and then a few scrabbling noises before he picked it up again, sniffing. "Oh my god Tony. They preserved him or something? I'll come up to New York, we can get him a plot in Arlington, right?"

That was apparently too much for Bucky. "It's a bit early for that, pal!"

Steve dropped the phone again, they could hear muffled swearing and banging from Steve as he tried to retrieve it. Tony made the mistake of catching Bucky's eye, and the next thing he knew they were both giggling like schoolgirls.

"Are…. Are you laughing?" Steve asked incredulously. "You stupid jerk."

"I left all the stupid with you!" Bucky replied, still laughing. That was apparently enough to make Steve laugh as well, and Tony relaxed into the giggle fit and enjoyed the moment. Conversely, the relief was enough to stop him giggling. He grinned broadly at Bucky and poked him in the leg, mouthing 'invite him here'.

"Stevie? It'd be real swell to see you again, even if you are a punk."

"I'll pack a bag and leave in 20," Steve promised. "You'd better be there, you can tell me all about it."

"Deal."

There was a long pause before Steve took a sharp breath. "Hanging up now." The line clicked almost immediately afterwards.

Tony and Bucky stared at each other for a moment. "That…. Went well?" Tony offered.

Bucky shook his head. "Punk is going to overthink things on the trip up here, arrive with a million questions. Not sure how happy he'd be about the whole Russian Assassin thing. Or the killing Howard thing, even if you are ok with it."

"He has no right to have a problem with it if I'm ok with it," Tony said dismissively. "I realise that his feelings are valid and all that bullshit, but seriously, they're my parents. And you were the gun - it would be irrational to blame you and I know we already talked about this. So, lunch?"

"I kinda fancy an omlette, that ok with you?"

"Food sounds good, I haven't eaten since dinner last night."

Bucky's eyes widened in alarm. "What were you doing in the gym if you hadn't eaten? Come on, let's go. JARVIS, please ask NOO-TRI to whip up two omelettes, one ham and mushroom with six eggs, and what do you want Tony?"

"Cheese and tomato, four eggs. Some red onion too, if we have any."

"Ooh, that sounds good. Red onion in mine as well please, thanks JARVIS."

"Your orders have been placed Sir, Sargent Barnes."

"What does JARVIS stand for?" Bucky asked as he followed Tony into the elevator.

"Just A Rather Very Intelligent System," Tony replied absently, trying to remember if NOO-TRI had made him an omelette before and if so, if it was any good.

"And MAG?"

"Magnificent And Gregarious." The doors opened onto the communal floor and he inhaled the scent of melting cheese happily. "I am starving! Thanks for cooking, Noots!"

"Do all the robots have acronym names?" Bucky persisted as he followed Tony into the kitchen and opened the fridge. "Orange juice?"

"Cranberry, if we have it. Not all of them, but most. FIX-IT is Fabulously Intelligent Xenophilic Internal Technician."

"What does Xenophilic mean?"

Tony grinned. "It's the most important descriptor for FIX-IT, it means that he loves new things."

Bucky shook his head with a smile and passed over a glass of cranberry juice. NOO-TRI beeped and slid a plate onto the table, with a professional looking omelette steaming away on it. "Looks great, thank you!"

"How about ROVER?"

Tony stuffed a large forkful of omelette into his mouth, inhaled sharply as he burnt his tongue and grabbed for the juice. "Ah, tasty but painful. Sorry, what? ROVER? All the security bots are Vehicular Extraction Robots. ROVER is Really Observant, COVER is Constantly Operational, MOVER is Mainly Obstructive, and so on. I was quite hungover when I made the security team, don't judge me."

Bucky grinned at him and thanked NOO-TRI as he handed him a full plate. "Your robots are swell, I'm not judging. The future is just what I imagined it would be."

"Leave the tower and you'll be a bit disappointed then," Tony cautioned him. "There are no flying cars out there, other than Lola. And I'm not sure what happened to her."

Thinking of Coulson always left him a little sad and he braced himself to answer more questions, but Bucky seemed to sense that he didn't want to talk about Lola and dropped the subject to focus on his plate. He was inhaling the omelette at an alarming rate, although Tony noted jealously that he didn't seem to have burnt his tongue. He rolled his own experimentally and took another sip of juice to soothe the burn.

"J, do you have an ETA for Cap?" Tony asked as he scraped the last few bits of egg from the plate and contemplated the peaches in the fruit bowl."

"The Captain will arrive in approximately three hours and thirty minutes, given current traffic," the AI reported.

"Plenty of time for you to look at my arm then!" Bucky smiled. Tony hesitated, and his face fell. "That is, if you still have time."

"Of course I have time," Tony rushed to reassure him. "I just… if you're ok with me drooling all over that fantastic piece of a- ah, technology until Capsicle gets here then I am more than happy to drool. And scan. And do mechanical engineering things. Yes. Let's go!" He left the peaches in the fruit bowl and the dishes for the bots to deal with.

Bucky surprised him when they reached the lab by handing him a peach wrapped in a paper towel with a saucy wink that left him blushing and spluttering over his thank you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As is usual for me, I've got halfway through and had to completely revise my chapter plan. :) I have a question for you lovely readers - shall I stick with Tony's POV through the whole story, or branch out and show you what's going through Bucky's head? What would people prefer?


	9. May

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like a disclaimer is in order for this chapter - I don't hate Steve. I don't always agree with his worldview however, and although Bucky is my favourite (tied with Clint) I am firmly Team Ironman when it came to CW. Mostly because I think that if Bucky had been in his right mind, he would not have agreed with what Steve pulled in his name. But that doesn't come into this story, as I have changed history! Mwahahaha.
> 
> Anyway, so I don't hate Steve, and his characterisation here, while possibly a little harsh, was necessary to the overall plot. It's not my intention to offend any Steve-lovers out there, my intention is to portray a different side to a complex character.

_May_

The visit with Steve did not go well, and Tony was sure that he was not the only one that breathed a sigh of relief when duty called the blond back to Washington. They finished saying their goodbyes at the elevator, and then Bucky threw himself lengthways on the nearest sofa with a groan.

"NOO-TRI, could you make up some of your awesome cinnamon hot chocolate please?" he called into the kitchen.

"That was… harder than I expected," Tony admitted, slouching into an armchair.

Steve had arrived, looking windswept and emotional, just as Tony was screwing the final plate into place inside Bucky's elbow. They had taken the elevator up to the communal lounge together as Bucky had seemed to want backup, and met Steve complimenting CAL on the coffee she had just made him. The coffee had nearly gone flying when the blond had spotted them and raced over to envelop Bucky in a bear hug. The rest of the evening had gone fairly well, with Steve chattering away about life in the future. The problems started the following morning, after he had time to review the carefully edited data pack that Tony had released to him.

Steve's immediate and hypocritical response was to start treating Bucky with kid gloves, questioning his daily routine and almost his every decision. He was judgemental and overprotective when Clint teased Bucky and downright unreasonable when Bucky showed any of the mannerisms he had picked up in Russia. When Tony and Clint had tried to have a quiet word with him - a stressed out Bucky had retreated to the dance studio with Natasha and locked the door - he had refused to listen.

"He's built up this image of who Bucky is in his head," Clint had analysed miserably. "And Bucky isn't that person anymore, if he ever was, and Steve is refusing to see that. I'm worried that he's going to hurt Bucky."

"Bucky is stronger than both of us put together, plus he's used to handling Steve," Tony reminded him. "And Steve is smart, I'm sure he'll figure it out."

Steve had not figured it out, and his stubborn refusal to accept what was right in front of his face had ratcheted up the stress level in the tower until even the robots were affected. What worried Tony most of all, was the way that Steve seemed to be unconsciously considering Bucky to be a possession rather than a person.

He had never been so happy when JARVIS alerted them during dinner - "But you hate mushrooms, Buck!" "Not the way CAL cooks them." "You shouldn't force yourself to eat something you dislike just to be polite you know." "Have you got mud in your ears?" - that Director Fury was trying to get in touch with Captain America.

NOO-TRI announced that the hot chocolate was ready with some excited beeping as he rolled past the sofa to carefully deposit two mugs on the coffee table without spilling a drop. "Thank you!" Bucky called after him. The sound he made after taking a sip was positively pornographic and Tony quickly buried his face in his own mug so that his flushed cheeks could be blamed on the steam.

You were an international playboy, he scolded himself. You should not be getting worked up over a noise, even if it was made by a man with an arm worthy of sonnets. Speaking of... "Hey Starbuck, I was wondering if you wanted me to have a go at redesigning your arm? I know we haven't managed to talk about it since Spangles arrived, but I had a chance to review the scans that JARVIS took and it looks like the weight is putting a lot of stress on your skeleton. If you didn't have the serum, I would have thought that you'd be in quite a lot of pain all the time."

"It aches a lot, especially towards the end of the day," Bucky admitted. "Yeah, if you've got time, I'd appreciate it."

"No problem Buckaroo. Um... Probably not my place to say, I know you and Steve are BFFs and all, but-"

"We're not," Bucky interrupted. "I mean, we were sure, but the punk has been... He's not the same. I'm ok with that, I really am, because I'm not the same. I'm accepting therapy advice from your AI, which is not the strangest thing to have happened to me this month, which is saying something - what was I saying?"

Tony shrugged. "You either went off track on not the same or therapy, I'm not sure which."

"Therapy. I'm having it, even if it is Robot Therapy - no offense intended JARVIS," he glanced at the nearest speaker with a fond smile. "I know that you've absorbed all the books, and you've been great honestly. I wouldn't trust a human with some of the stuff I've told you, but I trust you, and I trust you, Tony," he continued, turning to look Tony in the eye. "I trust you, you and Nat and Clint saved me, you gave me a home. Steve... This visit has been difficult. He doesn't seem well, his priorities are all messed up, and all he's offering me is a handful of dried up old memories and a skewed version of my own past. I used to get frustrated with him a lot, but that was nothing like this."

"Sorry to interrupt," Clint said from behind them, making Tony start with surprise. Bucky just rolled his eyes and Tony took a moment to himself to be annoyed over being the least spatially aware person in the tower. "Is this a general bitch about Steve party that anyone can join or are you venting specifically with Tony being a supportive ear? I just wanted to check before I jumped in."

Bucky smiled and scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "I think I'm venting," he admitted. "Sorry Tony. More than happy for this to turn into a general discussion, I know Steve frustrated everyone."

"He was treating you like a pet, man!" Clint exclaimed, vaulting over the back of the couch to land cross legged in the cushions. "It was driving me nuts. Every time I teased you, he was giving me evils over your shoulder. He even dragged me aside to give me a lecture on your 'fragile mental state'." The archer rolled his eyes and stole Tony's hot chocolate. "As if he's the one to talk. Nat and I are the ones with actual mind-fuckery experience here, if anything he should be taking cues from us."

Tony nodded his agreement. "He's never been kidnapped, he's never been tortured. Yet, he of course was the only person in the world who could possibly know what Bucky was going through because of the whole 'man out of time' thing."

"And when I pointed out, repeatedly, that the time difference was really not a problem for me, it was like he didn't hear a word!" Bucky groaned. "I love the guy, I really do, and I hope that he can learn to see past his own rose tinted ego and listen to what people are saying, or that friendship that he waxes lyrical about? It's never gonna be the same again."

"We need a distraction," Clint announced, finishing Tony's hot chocolate. "Bucky, we haven't shown you the obstacle course yet have we? Want to check it out? We can have a race."

"Sounds perfect!" Bucky chugged the last of his own mug. "Steve's been shadowing me in the gym talking gobbledegook, it's been driving me crazy."

*

Tony had long suspected that Natasha timed her nonchalant earth shattering statements to coincide with Clint taking a mouthful in a subtle attempt to see how far she could get him to spray food across the table.

"I'm thinking of moving to Washington on a temporary basis," she said as she took a platter of perfectly mashed potato from Bucky. Tony wiped a splatter of gravy from his cheek with his napkin and joined Clint looking offended.

"Is there something wrong with my tower?" he demanded.

"C'mon Nat, we have a good thing going here! Why would you want to leave?" Clint whined.

"Is this because of Steve?" Bucky asked.

Natasha looked down at her plate. "I love living here," she said quietly. "But I've been tasked with looking at the bigger picture, and that is that we are a team who may be called upon to fight together at any moment. Right now, after these past few weeks, I don't know that we're ready for that. Steve's behaviour has put him out of sync with all of us."

Tony bit back his protests and concentrated on adding mixed carrots and peas to his plate as Bucky and Clint continued to protest. He added a spoonful to Clint's plate for good measure. The thought of Natasha leaving the tower left him feeling a little shaky, and he wasn't entirely sure if it was the thought of her leaving them, or her not having them around for backup that was worse.

Natasha reached over the table to shove a bread roll in Clint's mouth and spoke calmly over his muffled squawk; "It'll just be a few weeks," she promised. "I'll be back before you have time to miss me. We should talk about the follow up to the Spring Ball; Natalie Rushman got an invitation, and I think it's to a Hydra only party."

"Now you're just changing the subject," Bucky protested.

"You're just salty because you couldn't escort her," Clint grinned.

"No I'm not!" Bucky protested. He looked down at his plate a moment. "Have you heard anything on me while you've been snooping around?"

"JARVIS has doubled the tower's electronic security, but we haven't had any cyber attacks," Tony attempted to reassure him through a mouthful of mashed potato.

"Nothing went down at that poker game I was monitoring the other night," Clint told them, spreading butter on the bread roll with more vigour than was strictly required. "Hydra seemed to be excited about a bigger project - no offence Bucky, but I didn't get the impression that you being missing was their priority."

"None taken," Bucky grunted. "I'd rather they weren't looking for me, but I don't often get what I want these days."

Once dinner was over and the bots were dealing with the washing up, Natasha followed Tony back down to his workshop. "Did you want me to look at the Widow's bites before you leave?" he asked, a little confused.

Natasha smiled sadly as she shook her head. "They're working perfectly, like everything you've ever made me," she assured him. "I just wanted to talk to you about this Washington trip. Is that all right or is now a bad time?"

"It's a fine time," Tony shrugged. "I really don't know why you're talking to me about it, it's fine. You're an adult, you can do whatever you want to do-"

"I don't want to leave you, Tony. I don't want to leave this home you offered us. But I do think the team is important, and it would be bad for me to leave things as they are when I think I'm in the best position to do something."

"Steve is chock full of old time unconsciously ingrained chauvinistic tendencies. I mean, the man acknowledges that you can fight like a badass, but won't swear anywhere near you and holds doors open for you."

"Some people call that just being polite," Natasha reminded him. Tony poked her with a the nearest object, which turned out to be a pen.

"You hate it when people open doors for you. I've seen that forehead wrinkle."

"And that is why I need to go," Natasha signed. "We have a strong partnership here, we all know each other. Bucky is fitting in surprisingly well, I'm sure he'll want to be on the team once he's feeling more stable. Steve... Steve doesn't know us, and he should if we're to work together. I want to try to bring him in."

"You're going to have to fix that stinking attitude of his first," Tony grumbled.

"And that is why I should go," she repeated patiently.

Tony glared down at the floor over his crossed arms, unwilling to look her in the eye and let her read how uncomfortable he was with the notion of her leaving. Even though she already knew, the deception made him feel a little better. "If that's what you want to do I won't stand in your way."

He was surprised when she stepped forward and laid her fingertips lightly on his forearm. "I knew that this would be hard for you when I decided, and I'm sorry for that," she said quietly. "If I could have found another path without causing even more pain, I would have done so. But, well, no one wants Steve to come back here just yet, right?"

Tony dug down deep and huffed out a laugh. "You're right," he admitted with a wry grin. "I think something might have exploded if he had stayed another day. Ok, go. We'll be all right."

"You'll look after them?" Natasha asked, and for the first time that evening Tony saw the reluctance to leave that she had been hiding from the others.

"I promise."

*

Steve in Washington was a lot easier to deal with than Steve in New York, they quickly discovered. He checked in every day like clockwork to chat with Bucky, and Bucky was spending a fair amount of time in the workshop with Tony, either helping the mechanic with a project or working together on the new arm schematic - Tony had bulldozed over his reluctance to be included because he felt very strongly that the people about to have things implanted into their bodies should at least have some input, and it was a crime that the medical industry wasn't quite there yet.

Tony ended up being an unintentional eavesdropper to most of their conversations, but Bucky didn't seem to mind, even going so far as to ask Tony's opinion after the calls were over.

"I think he's improving, but part of me is worried that it's just the distance," he confessed as they worked together to upgrade DUM-E's wheels.

"True, he might revert once he sees your pretty face," Tony grinned.

"He wishes he had my pretty face," Bucky muttered, poking at a bit of reticent rubber with a screwdriver. "Not like he's doing a lot with his stupid cheekbones."

"Woah, what don't I know about?" Tony asked. "Has he been needling you about something? Because you are totally free to just do you, tasty-freeze."

Bucky sighed, sitting back on his heels and absently twirling the screwdriver in one hand. "It's nothing, he just keeps on making these offhand comments that aren't really offhand, you know?"

"I have noticed his passive-aggressive tendencies before now."

"Well, these ones are about you, and how much time we're spending together, and about going out and meeting new people. I don't want to, I'm happy here. The thought of meeting new people terrifies me, and it's not like I've got anything in common with any civilians."

"I like you spending time with me," Tony blurted out before he could overthink it. "People are overrated anyway. Much cooler in here with the robots."

Bucky looked up from his intense study of the DUM-E's wheel to flash a brief smile at him. "Much cooler," he agreed.


	10. Birthday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to my research, Tony's birthday is May 29th.

_Birthday_

Although his feelings for Steve were still decidedly mixed, Tony knew that he couldn't exclude the man from his birthday party. The Robots were really looking forward to making a fuss of him, according to JARVIS, and they were working together to make him a present using the lab space he had set aside for Bruce. He was no longer allowed to go in there, although every now and again a member of the Robot Army would appear and pull Bucky away from whatever he was doing to drag him in there.

Bucky had graduated from being a general helper to being a full time assistant, which was a new experience for Tony. He made sure that Tony took a break and ate at regular intervals, he helped put things together, he had a lot of fun stress testing behind thick shatterproof screens in the corner of the lab with a variety of implements and he was good company, teasing the bots, asking JARVIS questions and occasionally disagreeing with Tony's music choices, although they agreed on the classics. Well, Tony called them classics, and Bucky got a strange amused look in his eye when he did.

"Do you know when Steve is getting here? Party starts at 6," Tony called as Bucky entered the workshop with a plate of pastries in one hand and two coffee mugs in the other.

"CAL made Danishes," Bucky announced. "They're still warm, I would pounce now if I was you. Steve is getting here for 6, he had something to do this morning so he wasn't going to leave first thing."

"Cool. Can you find an array of hammers and mallets and see if you can break the panel U is setting up in the corner? U will record everything and calculate the force."

"Is it worth starting with the metal arm?" Bucky asked as he handed over the plate. Tony stuffed a pastry in his mouth and groaned with delight, closing his eyes to better appreciate the perfect balance between buttery, flaky pastry and crème anglais that CAL had managed to achieve.

He opened them again to find Bucky staring at him. "Oh, sorry, you asked a question. Start with the metal arm; you're strong but I don't think you'll be able to damage it with regular muscle." He licked at his fingers to dislodge pastry flakes and reached out for another. Bucky was still standing sniper-still, staring at him. "Have I got pastry on my face?"

The question seemed to knock Bucky out of his statue-like distraction, the soldier practically dropped the plate on the nearest workbench and made a beeline for the tool chest that contained the big hammers. Tony checked his reflection to in the nearest shiny surface, which happened to be a red suit panel, but he couldn't see any pastry caught in his goatee.

Shrugging, he bit into the second danish and went back to designing the motor control circuits for Bucky's new fingers.

  
Bucky was back to his normal self once he had pummelled the metal into submission, so Tony called him over to help with an upgrade to one of the cleaning bots. The day seemed to fly past, until JARVIS was gently reminding them that the party started in an hour and they might want to change.

"It's my birthday, so if I want to be in a t-shirt and jeans I can, right?"

Bucky shrugged as he followed Tony into the elevator. "I was planning on dressing up a little, but if that's the look you want to go for then it's your birthday."

"Aww, you were going to dress up for me?"

"I'd planned to shave and everything," Bucky scratched at the stubble on his jaw. "I don’t think I pull it off like you do."

"It takes skill, precision and a ridiculously expensive razer to keep this face in order," Tony grinned. The doors opened on the main floor and the explosion of purple was overwhelming. Bucky clapped his flesh hand over Tony's eyes as the billionaire began to splutter in protest.

"JARVIS!" Clint called. "You weren't supposed to let him out on this floor yet!"

"My apologies, but Sir overrode your instruction when he manually activated the elevator," JARVIS said dryly from the ceiling.

"You mean Tony pushes a button and everything I say is suddenly worthless? Typical. Barnes, get him out of here please, he'll ruin the surprise and the kids will be so disappointed. Quick, SWIF-E and ROVER will be back any second."

"Roger that," Bucky said, steering Tony towards the penthouse access stairs with his metal hand.

Tony thought about promising to keep his eyes closed, but the amount of effort his fellow housemates were going to was rather impressive and he found that he didn't want to interfere.

"Step up," Bucky murmured in his ear, slight pressure on his elbow prompting him to climb the stairs. It was almost like dancing.

"Bet you lead a mean waltz," Tony whispered back, and was rewarded with a chuckle.

"Maybe you'll find out later."

Bucky left him at the top of the stairs with a stern admonishment not to look down and ruin his surprise. Not wanting to disappoint the robots, Tony did as instructed and headed into the Master bath to shower off the hydraulic fluid that he was pretty sure was in his hair. He had mixed feelings about his birthdays, he always had. They seemed to end in disaster more often than not, and he had seriously considered just letting the date pass unmarked this year.

But then JARVIS had mentioned it, and DUM-E had somehow communicated stories about past birthday celebrations to the rest of the Army and all of a sudden their little circuits were overloaded with plans to 'do a thing!' in honour of their maker.

He headed back downstairs a carefully calculated ten minutes after 6pm, to give everyone a chance to get into position. You couldn't see a lot from the top of the stairs, just a few bits of purple ribbon and a large bunch of red and gold flowers in the middle of the coffee table - they clashed terribly with the purple. As he descended, he spotted balloons and streamers and what looked like a home-made birthday banner judging by the paint track marks smudging some of the letters.

"SURPRISE!" called several familiar voices in time with a chorus of excited beeps and whistles as his Robots charged across the floor towards him. Feeling more than a little overwhelmed, he dropped to his knees to hug DUM-E and U, while the others whirred around his feet beeping excitedly. "Wow, team, what a good surprise. I was very surprised. Did you do this all yourself?"

U whistled and gestured towards Clint with her claw. "Clint helped? I think you all did a great job."

He turned to the humans, who were standing in an awkward semi-circle with pleased grins on their faces. "Cap, nice to see you again. Welcome home Natasha."

"Happy Birthday Tony," Steve said politely, while Natasha abruptly turned away. Clint stepped closer with a concerned frown on his face, and the rest of them unanimously shuffled towards the kitchen to give them space.

"Was it something I said?" Tony hissed to Bucky, who really did clean up nicely with his hair pulled back and his face free from stubble. His eyes looked somehow bluer.

"You welcomed her home, dummy," Bucky pointed out. "Not you," he quickly corrected, patting DUM-E's claw as the robot rolled up at the sound of his name.

"Oh, but that's a good thing, isn't it? Why is she upset?"

"Sometimes Tones, you're a little dim for a genius," Rhodey teased.

"Honeybear! What did you get me this year?"

"The same thing as last year," Rhodey smiled, opening his arms. Tony stepped forward for their customary Birthday Bear Hug and sighed happily.

"You need to visit more often."

CAL and NOO-TRI had outdone themselves, the dining table was completely covered with all of Tony's favourite dishes. After a quick consultation, half the robots peeled off and vanished into the kitchen at high speed. Bemused, the humans allowed the remaining robots to herd them onto chairs and sat expectantly. The lights dimmed, Clint and Natasha slipped in to sit at one end of the table. There was a loud hum.

"Is that FLAVOR?" Tony asked JARVIS.

"Yes, Sir."

Bucky rolled his eyes. "What does that stand for?"

Tony coughed, remembering the drunken delight with which he had created that particular acronym. "Fly Like a vulture overhead robot," he admitted as the hum increased in pitch.

FLAVOR appeared in the kitchen door, wobbling determinedly with a large birthday cake on his carry tray. "FLAVOR, buddy, I think that cake may exceed your lift capacity," Tony warned him. "Did they weigh it?"

FLAVOR wobbled his way halfway to the table before there was a spark and he abruptly tilted sideways. The cake dropped to the floor in an explosion of crumbs and buttercream and there was a chorus of dismayed beeping from the kitchen. FLAVOR spiralled halfway to the ceiling before he compensated for the missing load, a thin trail of smoke drifting up from one rotor.

Tony was out of his seat in an instant. "Ok, buddy, land on the coffee table, yeah?" he called up to the distressed drone. "you'll be ok, you just overstressed one of the motors or something like that. I can fix it, just come down slowly, ok?" FLAVOR wobbled his way over to the coffee table and set down with less finesse than usual. "Great job," Tony praised him. FLAVOR responded with a series of whirs that sounded both apologetic and insistent to Tony's trained ear.

"Sir, if I may interject," JARVIS said from the nearest speaker. "FLAVOR is asking for you to leave his repairs until after you have enjoyed your birthday meal."

Tony nodded reluctantly. "Ok buddy, if you're sure. Are you all right there?"

FLAVOR spun his rotors in assent, so Tony left him with a pat to his control module. Bucky and Steve were on their hands and knees rescuing the cake, the majority of which had remained on the cake board and so was good to go. They were removing the top layer of icing that had been splattered with candle wax and generally straightening up the layers.

"Pity about the piping," Steve was saying. "Think if we carry it back to the kitchen, the robots will redecorate it?"

"Not sure if saving something this broken is something that they're capable of," Bucky chewed at his lip. "They're not great at going off the book, and this is most certainly off the book. It's not level any more, and there are several cracks in it. I'm worried that they'd make it worse trying to re-ice it, and then be upset."

"I think it looks fantastic just as is," Tony announced. "I'm happy to have a slice right now, no new icing required."

Bucky licked a smear of buttercream from his thumb and grinned. "It certainly tastes great."

Tony had tried to look away once he realised what Barnes was up to, but ended up transfixed anyway by the juxtaposition of pink tongue and shining silver metal. Blinking swiftly, he refocused on the table, where Rhodey was telling the rest of the group about a party they had thrown in College. "Cake anyone?"

"Looks amazing," Clint said immediately. "I want a huge slice."

The muffled sound of helicopter rotors through the windows caught Tony's ear and he turned in confusion. The soundproofing was state of the art, the helicopter would have to be really close for him to be able to pick up-

There was an explosion that blew everyone backwards and figures wearing black tactical gear and facemasks swung through the open windows. The robots had mostly been in the kitchen, Clint, Natasha and Rhodey were behind the overturned table. Clint surfaced with one of Natasha's handguns and began firing on their attackers as two hissing gas canisters tumbled into the room.

"JARVIS!" Tony wheezed. "Activate shields on this level!"

JARVIS activated the forcefield that he had built into the ceiling and walls of the common area, blocking the room into three strips. Most of the group were behind two forcefields, Tony and Steve were in the middle strip with three attackers. Steve growled and kicked the closest one in the head, Tony looked around for a weapon. The gas canisters hit the first forcefield and fell to the floor. Unfortunately, the forcefield was designed to stop solids and liquids, so small puffs of gas were still seeping through and contaminating the air.

"Air extraction to 500%, J" Tony coughed, climbing to his feet, clutching an aching elbow. He dragged a piece of metal from the rubble and prepared to use it like a baseball bat. The forcefield wasn't complete, the ceiling was cracked and he suspected that some of the circuitry had been damaged in the explosion, and despite the smoke haze it wouldn't take long for the rest of the attackers to find the weak sections and push through. The smoke began to wisp upward as the fans on the roof wound up to maximum capacity. "I need a suit."

"Sir, the Mark 45 has been deployed, ETA 10 seconds," JARVIS announced.

"Stark! We can't do anything from behind this forcefield!" Clint shouted.

Steve finished incapacitating the third attacker and turned to Tony with a concerned look on his face. "Watch out-"

There was a pinprick in his shoulder. Tony looked down in alarm to find a hypodermic needle sticking through his t-shirt. He needed to get it out. Feeling waterlogged, he tried to reach up with his other arm to get the thing out of his skin, but they had shot his good arm. His elbow wouldn't co-operate, he couldn't reach the needle.

"Steve? I can't," he explained as everything changed from waterlogged to heavy. It was all so heavy. There were hands on his back, he was moving without moving. Slowly, he twisted his head, wondering if Bucky had come to get him, but the man dragging him was wearing the wrong mask. Or was it men? Sometimes it looked like there were two of them, but he couldn't be sure because his eyelids were as heavy as his limbs.

He saw a flash of red and gold be swallowed by black.

It felt like falling.


	11. June

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shift to Bucky's POV.

_June_

He was good at waiting.

He knew now that he'd been waiting all his life. Waiting for Steve to get better. Waiting for Dad to fall asleep so that he could creep downstairs and take some bread from the pantry for dinner. Waiting for class to be over. Waiting for War to be declared. The army had been full of waiting, and Hydra hadn't been much different.

He had never hated it quite so much as he did now though.

Steve and Natasha had returned to Washington after the first week, but Clint was there, and Rhodey had moved in temporarily. Bucky hadn't slept in his bed since the attack, preferring to spend the nights in the workshop with the robots. They missed Tony as much as he did, and he felt like they appreciated the company.

His brain showed him a live action replay every time he closed his eyes.

Tony, looking beautifully happy as he watched Bucky lick icing off his fingers.

Tony, falling like a broken marionette to the side as the windows shattered.

A shimmering forcefield cutting him off, rainbows of light sparking as he beat on it with his metal arm, watching helplessly as Tony swayed with a piece of rebar in his fist.

Realising that Steve was occupied fighting three on one and couldn't see the masked figures pushing through the forcefield behind Tony. How could they push through when he couldn't? He'd howled in frustration and warning, but Tony didn't seem to hear him.

The Iron Man suit rising smoothly outside the window and hope blossoming in his chest, only to be poisoned by fear because their attackers had planned for this.

The suit was enveloped in something black and sticky, its bright blue lights flickering as it was consumed by darkness.

He'd watched Steve fight his way through to the group carrying Tony, but they had all turned their attention to him now that the suit was incapacitated, and he was only one man. He'd left a trail of bodies in his wake, but it was not enough - they hooked a line around Tony's limp form and pushed him out of the window before jumping themselves.

The helicopter had peeled away and Bucky stared after it, Clint's shouts to JARVIS to override the forcefield ringing in his ears as he cradled an unconscious Natasha.

JARVIS had refused to respond to anyone other than Bucky for the first three hours. Later, they found out that that was because he had been using almost all of his processing power to track the Helicopter, and Bucky was the only one with a high enough priority level assigned to override that search - even then he was only allocated 0.12% of JARVIS' capacity.

Still, 0.12% had been enough to get the forcefield shut down and a medical team dispatched to the level to look at Natasha and Rhodes, who had both been knocked unconscious by the blast.

JARVIS had lost the trail when the kidnappers had taken to the water in an unregistered power boat.

After that, the extremely terrible week of waiting had begun. The first real lead had come on day two, when they were eating a quick lunch. JARVIS had managed to remotely trace a wire tap on the phone in Steve's apartment in Washington. Clint had punched Steve, Bucky had been tempted to do the same but he had done the adult thing and helped Natasha hold the archer back. He could hardly believe that Tony's kidnapping was Steve's fault, but the evidence was all there and Bucky had been tempted to punch the man himself. With his left hand. Honestly, after being given a secure, untraceable, encrypted mobile phone to use, why the lummox had felt the urge to use his outdated landline to call the tower was beyond Bucky.

They'd nearly had a repeat of the incident when Rhodey had returned from his daily visit to update Pepper. Clint still wasn't speaking to Steve a full week later, and Bucky didn't blame him.

"What I don't get," Bucky told DUM-E and U, "Is why they took Tony at all. We all expected them to target me."

DUM-E drooped sadly, U seemed to ignore him and continued to fuss with the blanket she had draped over him while he lay on the couch and failed to sleep.

"JARVIS, can you replay the footage again please?" Bucky asked, reaching down to pat DUM-E's claw.

The AI did not respond, but after a moment a screen slid down from the ceiling and began to replay the footage. "Pause, please," Bucky requested. "Can you do a mock up of the anticipated sightlines for the attackers? Tony and I are the only two caucasian brunettes in the room as Bruce couldn't make it, maybe they got us mixed up?"

JARVIS split the screen in two and displayed a birds eye layout of the room, with coloured dots to represent Avengers and Attackers, and arrows with projected sightlines.

"They couldn't see me at first," Bucky sighed as the picture became clear. "I was thrown behind some of MAG's plants. They immediately targeted Tony instead. Once the Armour appeared, they must have thought that was Tony and they'd captured both of us. Surely they would have realised their mistake once they got close to him though?"

"I detected no intercom communication between the attackers," JARVIS told him, breaking silence for the first time in two days.

"Maybe the two that knew that they'd grabbed Tony couldn't tell the others then," Bucky sighed. "Once I got up and started beating the forcefield they should have seen me though, even with all the smoke."

"The smoke was much worse on their side of the room, and the field separating you from Sir and Captain America was at full strength, I do not believe that they had the capability of breaking through it in the time they had available."

"Did you manage to find the boat yet?"

"Unfortunately it has not been registered as being docked in any port within it's known range," JARVIS reported. "I will continue to monitor, but the most probably outcome is that it was deliberately scuppered and is on the bottom of the Atlantic. They probably moved Sir to another vessel."

"And we have no way of knowing where that second vessel was going. Any other way we can track Tony? With all this technology around, the man must have had a tracking chip or something."

"Sir had a tracking device of his own design implanted in his arm," JARVIS confirmed. "It was removed in the helicopter. There is a secondary device in his thigh, it has not been activated, I presume that Sir has either not had the opportunity or that the device has likewise been located and removed."

Bucky nodded and leant back against the cushions. The blanket that U had found smelt like engine grease and ozone and Tony, and it made Bucky miss the engineer even more. He'd been enjoying the manic engineering design sessions and the way that the usually suave billionaire blushed when he flirted a little. The tower felt cold and empty without Tony's warm presence, as if the colour had been sucked out of the rooms. He pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and stared over to where FIX-IT was slowly polishing the Mark 44.

"NOO-TRI has noted that your calorie intake since the incident has not been optimal, and would like me to ask you if you want a smoothie," JARVIS said into the silence.

"Tell him thank you, a smoothie sounds great," Bucky sighed. "I'm not hungry, but I need to be on top form to rescue Tony when you find him right? Because you will find him, JARVIS. I know you will."

*

Ten days out after the attack Bruce finally arrived. Bucky sensed that JARVIS and the rest of the robot army approved of the way that he made a beeline for the lab, not even pausing to drop his bag off in his bedroom. The suit that had been coated in goop by the attackers had crashed onto a balcony several floors down, but Bucky had already supervised the removal of several samples for Bruce to work on.

MAG and CAL seemed to perk up a little, and the culinary robot left the charging corner for the first time that month to take the elevator to the communal level, much to Bucky's relief. It had been humbling to discover how entirely useless he and Clint were in the kitchen, and Rhodey could only reliably make pasta with sauce from a jar, or canned soup and sandwiches. NOO-TRI had been making smoothies and grilled cheese sandwiches for Bucky in the lab, but he had refused to leave the safe space to cook on the main level.

"There are some strange readings here, I want to put this in the mass spectrometer," Bruce announced after a few hours. "And if we're having dinner, I should probably shower. JARVIS, is CAL cooking dinner tonight?"

"She has informed me that she is making your favourite, Doctor Banner," JARVIS responded promptly.

CAL has been really down since Tony was taken," Bucky explained to Bruce. "I'm glad that your arrival has given her some hope."

"I'll do my best to find a new lead to work," Bruce promised. "This analysis needs a few hours to run, so if JARVIS doesn't mind keeping an eye on it for me, I'll go and wash up for dinner."

"Of course, Doctor Banner," JARVIS promised. "Shall I have DUM-E standing by with the fire extinguisher?"

"I don't think it's that kind of sample analysis," Bruce said with a considering look at the machine he had been bending over. "But this is an unknown substance. Yes, let's have him standing by just in case please."

DUM-E whirred and rolled over to the wall where the fire extinguishers were displayed. He considered the display for a moment, and then picked a CO2 extinguisher from the far left.

"Nice choice," Bruce praised him. "There won't be any humans in the room, so excessive CO2 won't be dangerous. I'll be back down in three hours, but please alert me if anything changes in the mean time."

Bucky paused to check that each robot in the room was ok, and then followed Bruce into the elevator. "It's good that you're here," he said as they moved smoothly upwards. "Do you think that you'll be able to find something?"

"I hope so, but I think following the wire tap on Steve's landline might have been more fruitful," Bruce admitted, making a halfhearted attempt to straighten his rumpled shirt.

"Natasha is on it, but she's being careful. I think Clint said that she hoped to have an update by today, so maybe he'll have some news at dinner."

The doors opened, and both men inhaled happily. "Smells like CAL has outdone herself," Bruce said, dropping his bag by the wall and making a beeline for the kitchen. "I'm going to see if she'd like company while she finishes up."

Clint was sitting cross legged on the coffee table, his eyes on his phone. "Any news from Natasha?" Bucky asked, perching on the edge of the sofa. The archer looked up with haunted eyes and Bucky reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. "What's wrong?"

"The wire tap lead back to Shield," Clint said hoarsely. "Which in itself isn't all that surprising, because of course they'd want to keep track of their precious Captain. But it wasn't Shield that attacked the tower, and Natasha thinks that she's found evidence of something worse than a single mole. She thinks that Hydra has infiltrated every single level of Shield, and they took Tony. She's gone dark."

"We knew Hydra were out there," Bucky reminded him. "You'd already uncovered evidence of them."

"But within Shield?" Clint chewed at a lip already split and bleeding. "I thought I was working for the good guys. How many of my missions were sanctioned by Hydra? How many innocents have I unwittingly taken?"

Bucky pulled him up off of the table and into a hug. "If I'm not allowed to blame myself for what I did under the direct control of Hydra and the Red Room, then you're not allowed to blame yourself for this. You were following orders."

The soldier dragged a subdued Clint to the dining table as Bruce appeared with a plate of fresh chapatti. A few minutes later Rhodey appeared and Bucky quietly filled the other two in on what Clint had heard from Natasha as the archer mechanically ate the food Bruce put on his plate.

"I have an incoming text message from Captain Rogers," JARVIS said unexpectedly halfway through the meal. "He advises that he thinks that they know why Sir was taken, Director Fury has warned him that there are three new helicarriers being built in Washington. Sir was involved in the design of the engines on the original helicarrier."

"So, Tony is in Washington?" Bucky asked, rising to his feet. Rhodey waved him back down.

"They'll have him designing, not building. He doesn't necessarily need to be anywhere near Washington," Tony's best friend sighed. "JARVIS, this can be a new direction to search in. If you can hack the Shield facility in Washington-"

"The Triskelion," Clint interrupted.

"Ok, that, and monitor incoming transmissions that are larger than regular emails. They'll be having him send blueprints and other revisions, the files should be large. Video feeds as well, especially erratically timed ones from the same source, and run a keyword search on the emails. Clint, did Shield have a specific codename for Tony other than Iron Man?"

"The facility is huge, it's going to be too much data," Clint protested.

"Don't underestimate JARVIS," Bucky said gently. "He can do this."

Clint signed and helped himself to a chapatti and some more chickpea daal. "Alright. Um, JARVIS, check for mentions of Prodigy. It's Howard's old code name for Tony." Rhodey froze with his spoon halfway to his mouth, staring at the archer, who shrugged uncomfortably. "I haven't told him, I wasn't sure if it would be helpful at this point," the blond admitted.

"I'm not sure if that makes me hate the man more or less," Rhodey said eventually.

"More," Bruce sighed. "Pass the daal, please?"

*

Bucky found Clint at the range after dinner. "When we find Tony, I want in," he said, stalking to the back wall to select a rifle.

"I can't authorise that and you know it," Clint sighed. "I get it, I do, you're supposed to be in hiding, not storming wherever they're keeping Tony with the rest of us. Bruce and I can handle it."

"Rhodes is in and he's not an official Avenger," Bucky pointed out as he quickly field stripped the weapon he had chosen.

"I'm not sure if I'm terrified or turned on," Clint muttered as he tracked Bucky's hands. "Whatever Rhodes does is officially sanctioned by the US military. Bruce and I are on Shield's books, whatever that's worth these days. You're a complete vigilante at this point, and I don't dare mention you to Shield now that it's compromised."

"What about Tony?"

"Affiliated with Shield, at least on paper, and he's a billionaire. He can pay for his own damages. You accidentally take out half a city block and the media will be baying for your blood within 24 hours."

"I don't care, I want in," Bucky insisted, watching Clint chew his already ragged lip. "JARVIS thinks I'm stable enough now, and you need the backup."

"JARVIS is not impartial," Clint protested. He looked at the freshly reassembled rifle. "Tell you want, we'll have a contest, and if you win, I'll consider it, ok?"

"Deal."

 


	12. July

_July_

 

He wasn't sure how long it had been, but he knew that it was weeks.

The guards were careful not to touch him now, they shoved food through a slot in the door at regular intervals and otherwise left him alone with the voice.

The voice was mad, utterly mad, but there was an edge of brilliance.

He had recognise the name it had told him.

Zola.

At first, at Zola's direction, masked men had come into the cell at regular intervals to beat him. 'Pain focuses the mind, Doctor Stark' Zola was fond of saying. Tony had tried to sabotage the speakers set into the walls of his cell, but they simply flooded the cube with knockout gas and replaced them.

The men didn't come anymore, not since Tony had accidentally turned the room into a raging inferno as the continuous physical damage reactivated the traces of extremis left in his system after the removal of the arc reactor from his breastbone.

He slept on a metal sheet now, they had refused to continue to supply bedding after he ignited the third set during a nightmare.

He felt sick that he was glad they'd chosen to give him disposable scrubs to wear rather than a more humiliating option.

The room contained a metal bed, a metal table, a metal toilet and a metal sink. The only thing in the room that was not metal were the blueprints of the helicarrier engines that he was currently ignoring.

He had tried destroying them, flushing them, tearing them into strips and weaving them into a full table service. It made no difference, they were replaced and Zola's voice droned on.

He had stopped bothering to reply, instead trying to focus beyond the Red Skull's former lackey to hear the rhythms of the building he found himself in. It had a climate control system, and regular guard patrols. At irregular intervals, the floor in the left corner vibrated slightly in response to something below. He felt that he was above ground rather than underground, but the lack of windows made it difficult to be certain, and he wasn't sure why he had that impression at all.

Extremis was a whole different challenge, but after his initial uncontrolled explosion he felt that he had a handle on it. He had proved his fine control by burning swear words into the blueprints with his fingers in his best handwriting. He knew that they had knocked him out to take blood samples on several occasions, but so far no other Extremis powered soldiers had entered the room in a bid to subdue him further.

"If you would only co-operate, Doctor Stark," Zola was saying. "Look at the blueprints, we know that you had further ideas, that the engines could be more powerful and sustainable if you would only review the plans."

Tony tuned him out again, preferring to focus on his memories of Bucky, standing beside him in the lab as they worked on the prototype for his new arm.

"I'm just saying, a vibrate function could have some interesting applications," The sniper had joked, running his fingers over the palm of the prototype. "Might be a bit distracting if it accidentally switches on in the middle of a fight mind you."

Tony missed his Robot Army with a sharp ache that had settled into his gut. He hadn't expected to miss Bucky with similar intensity, but he had quickly been proved wrong on that score.

Unlike Steve, who Howard Stark had placed on a metaphorical pinnacle after death, James Buchanan Barnes had been viewed somewhat differently in the Stark household. Tony had known about him, a frequent supporting figure in the stories that Howard told when drunk, but none of his vague second hand knowledge had prepared him for the reality of having Barnes in his life and in his home.

The sniper was no supporting figure, he deserved his own spotlight.

Tony had started to wonder if the former assassin might have been interested in sharing one, before the whole nasty kidnapping business took place. He had caught the sniper looking at him, and he had felt a cautious warmth in the pit of his stomach as they laughed and worked together. He had also half convinced himself that Bucky was flirting with him on purpose, however unlikely that had seemed at first.

But perhaps the boredom of staring at the same four walls for days on end was starting to warp his memories from what had happened to what he wished had happened. It wouldn't be the first time he'd daydreamed to a point where he was almost unable to distinguish fantasy from reality.

There was a muffled thud from elsewhere in the facility, barely audible above Zola's persistent arguments. A few minutes later, he heard a scratching sound in the air vent, and Zola's voice fizzed out in a burst of static.

"Hello?" Tony called, or tried to. He coughed to clear his throat and tried again. "Hello?"

A very familiar excited beep answered him.

"TRIPLE-R, is that you?" Tony asked. "Or one of you?"

An affirmative beep answered him as the ventilation grate fell into the room. Tony climbed on the desk to lower the spider bot section down to the floor. "Where's the rest of you?"

TRIPLE-R gestured towards the left hand wall as he made a beeline for the door, opening a small storage section in his carapace to place what Tony recognised as one of his localised EMP disks on the door. He activated the device and the magnetic lock failed, Tony was quick to push the door open and peer up and down the corridor, thankful that the shoddy design of the place had led the builders to install fail safe locks instead of fail secure.

"Which way now? I take it we have backup," he muttered to his tiny metal saviour. To his surprise, TRIPLE-R whirred with uncertainty rather than beeping in assent. "We don't have backup?"

Another section of TRIPLE-R appeared from round the corner, and the two merged effortlessly. Tony was presented with a comm unit, which he immediately slipped into his ear.

"This is Iron Man, I'm out of my cell and looking for directions," he transmitted.

"Hey Iron Man, glad TRIPLE-R found you," Bucky's familiar voice said over the sound of gunfire and faint cries of alarm. "Hawkeye, War Machine and I are at the east end of the compound being a distraction, please follow TRIPLE-R to the northwest. FLAVOR will be on hand to carry him out of there, and JARVIS has a suit prepped and waiting to pick you up."

"Where's everyone else?" Tony asked as he jogged after TRIPLE-R.

"Long story," Clint grunted, the familiar snap of his bowstring echoing through the comm. "Tell you when we get home."

"Nice rescue, thanks guys. Iron man out." Tony focused on following TRIPLE-R and not being seen by his kidnappers, not wanting to distract Bucky and Clint with any more chatter on the coms. The third section of TRIPLE-R was waiting for them behind a water fountain, a white lab coat gripped in one claw.

"Nice thinking!" Tony gasped, pulling on the coat and buttoning it over the paper thin scrubs. He was still barefoot and unshaven, but he should look slightly less like a fugitive from a distance now.

It was enough, everyone they spotted down distant corridors didn't look past the lab coat, if they looked at all, and TRIPLE-R was able to successfully guide Tony to a steel door down a short side corridor. He felt horribly exposed as he waited for the faithful robot to deal with the lock and let both of them out.

Every second felt like a minute, but eventually TRIPLE-R gave a quiet trill of triumph and the door swung open. Before them, grey concrete stretched across to a chain link fence topped with a frankly alarming amount of barbed wire. Taking a deep breath, he braced for pain and threw himself forwards, doing his best to avoid the broken glass and larger chunks of debris that covered the concrete. The bright sunlight made him squint, but the warmth on his face was a welcome change from the cold metal room he'd left behind him.

JARVIS piloted the MK44 to a smooth descent right in front of Tony, and the engineer twisted to let the suit envelop him.

"Sir, your core temperature is 7.3 degrees higher than the previous standard, are you all right?" the AI asked as he ascended to 300 ft above the compound and paused to wait for TRIPLE-R to finish securing himself to FLAVOR's carry platform and join them.

"Had a little problem with extremis reactivating, nothing to worry about."

"My scanning abilities in this suit are considerable, and my initial assessment is that your cells have been rejuvenated," the AI noted.

"Are you saying I'm younger?" Tony asked in astonishment as FLAVOR rose smoothly beside him, TRIPLE-R securely attached to his undercarriage. "Never mind, problem for another time. Can we join in the fight?"

"The fight is over," JARVIS reported. "I confirmed to the team that I had you, and they disengaged. The intention is to let Shield handle the clean up. My instructions are to take you back to the tower, Doctor Banner is waiting for you."

"Best not keep Bruce waiting then, let's go. FLAVOR, can you keep up? We'll probably be going at about Mach 1.5, I don't want to push it."

There was a small text display in the lower left corner of the HUD, and after a second 'F.L.A.V.O.R.[TRANS]: AFFIRMATIVE' flashed up.

"Great, let's race them home."

 

*

 

JARVIS opened the workshop window and Tony flew straight in, rather than landing on the landing pad as usual. He was immediately swarmed by every member of the Robot Army, who had been patiently waiting for him.

"I missed you too!" Tony told them all as soon as he managed to extract himself from the armour - it took longer than usual because everyone was trying to help. "This place looks great, really clean and tidy. MAG, darling, could you get me some clean clothes? And is the shower all set up? I need to have a rinse off. Incinerate these scrubs, with extreme prejudice. Thank you."

He stepped carefully as he made his way to the shower at the back of the workshop, already spraying warm water at JARVIS' direction, not wanting to accidentally tread on his enthusiastic creations.

He left the shower feeling 110% better than he had previously, and accepted the clothing that MAG had procured from the penthouse - a well worn Black Sabbath T-shirt and a pair of MIT sweatpants. Clearly the bot felt that he needed some soft cozy comfort in his life, and he was inclined to agree with her. She had also found a pair of faux fur slippers that looked like little teddy bears. Confused, but not wanting to hurt her feelings, he slipped them on. "These are really comfortable, thank you," he told her as he wriggled his toes into warm softness. "I'm not sure I want to know where they came from."

"I believe that Sargent Barnes ordered two pairs last week," JARVIS revealed. "I'm afraid that I do not have enough data to extrapolate his intentions, but the pair that MAG retrieved were left in the penthouse."

Still struggling to process the apparent fact that Bucky had bought him teddy bear slippers, Tony accepted the smoothie that NOOT-TRI thrust upon him and realised that he had kept Bruce waiting long enough. He was on his way out of the room, followed by his robots, when he caught sight of the couch.

There was a neatly folded blanket on one end, with a pillow on it, and a stack of hardback books on the floor, with a tablet propped on the top. As he slowed, trying to make sense of the scene, he realised that there was a different scent in the air, fresh oranges and a hint of mint cutting through the usual hot metal and coconut scent of the workshop. He spotted one of the heavier weights on top of a nearby workbench, along with a scattered pile of sketching paper, several pencils and two handguns.

"JARVIS, who has been in here since I left?" JARVIS took an unusually long time to answer and Tony frowned up at him. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing is wrong, Sir," The AI responded with his usual promptness.

"Then answer the question, J," Tony ordered, walking over to the table and reaching for the closest sheet. It was a detailed rendition of DUM-E posing with his favourite fire extinguisher.

"Sargent Barnes and Doctor Banner," the AI reported with obvious reluctance over what was technically a security breach. Tony decided that there were more important things in life than berating his AI over what was ultimately a harmless selfish decision to override a standing order under unusual circumstances.

"Bucky's been down here? What was he doing?" the Engineer asked curiously, reaching for the next sketch. "Did he draw these?"

"Yes. Sargent Barnes spent most of his time down here after you were abducted. The younger AIs were distressed by your absence, and I also found his presence.... Comforting."

"Ok, the teddy slippers are starting to make a little more sense," Tony smiled. "The floors down here are damned cold at times. Hey! DUM-E, ROVER, have you seen these? It's you! See? It's really good as well, I had no idea Freezerburn could draw." He crouched down to better show ROVER's main optic camera the sketch of himself, leaving the other sketch on the table for DUM-E to peek at.

"Doctor Banner has asked if he should put the kettle on, Sir," JARVIS reminded him.

"Tell him yes, I'm on my way."

Bruce had made himself comfortable in the laboratory that Tony had set aside for him, there were green and red plants scattered around that hadn't been there before and a small polished copper tea set on a wooden tray in the kitchenette. Tony looked around with a pleased smile at this evidence that the other scientist had moved into the space and made it his own.

"Sorry I didn't rush up straight away big guy, I was in desperate need of a shower," he said as he came through the door.

Bruce spun around and knocked a folder off of the workbench with his elbow. "Tony!"

"That's my name, don't wear it out," the billionaire quipped, eyeing the examination table with deep distrust before hopping up on it. "You'll probably find that I'm in better shape than you're expecting, they were feeding me brain food and they stopped the beatings after I accidentally roasted three of them to a crisp."

"They roasted themselves by provoking you," Bruce contradicted as he wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Tony's bicep. "JARVIS sent me the data he collected in the suit, it's fascinating, but I think we'll both feel better if we can confirm that extremis is stable. Do you want to try to deactivate it again if it is?"

Tony shrugged as best as he could with Bruce fussing over his left arm. "Maybe. I'm not sure? Last time I deactivated it, but Pep- there was a factor in that particular equation that no longer applies."

"I'm sure Clint and Natasha would be sad to see you leave 'Team Human'," Bruce said, drawing a syringe of blood and pressing a cotton ball to the pinprick.

"Also a consideration," Tony agreed. "Or maybe they'd like to join me? You never know. I don't know. I suppose I could ask them? I mean, if it's something they want, then I don't see why not. They're already superheroes."

"Sometimes I think Natasha is already enhanced, but then I see her and Clint coming back from missions and I think I'm dreaming," Bruce revealed, preparing three slides and putting the rest of the sample in the fridge. "Come on, I made an extra one so that you can look for yourself."

Tony followed him over to a bench with seven different microscopes on it and took the seat that Bruce indicated. An hour later, although they agreed that more tests were needed, they were reasonably confidant that Tony wasn't going to burn down the tower while awake, although Bruce recommended Tony give JARVIS a new protocol to wake him if his temperature spiked during the night.

"CAL has made your favourites for dinner I'm sure," the other scientist told him as they shut the lab down for the evening. "And the others have shown extraordinary patience by not storming in here to demand to know if you're ok."

"Actually, Doctor Banner, Agent Barton and Sargent Barnes have only just returned to the building," JARVIS revealed. "They took pains to lay false trails and otherwise hide their involvement in this particular incident."

"What? Why did they do that?" Tony asked as they stepped in the elevator.

Bruce shifted uncomfortably. "Shield doesn't know about Bucky, so the whole rescue mission was somewhat under the radar. It's a long story, remnants of Hydra aren't just messing around with the Russian Mafia, they've infiltrated Shield itself."

Tony lent back against the mirrored elevator wall and processed the implications of that for a second. "Dad must be spinning in his grave. I hope he gets travel sick," he muttered. "Ok, sounds like I have a lot of catching up to do."

"Dinner first," Bruce advised. "They might have been feeding you, but you've still lost weight."

 

*

 

Bucky, Clint and Rhodey clattered down the stairs from the quinjet landing pad and dumped their dirt encrusted body armour in a pile to deal with later. Tony gave each of them a careful once over as they strode towards him, and then he was swept up into a group hug and felt the last of the tension he had been carrying unclench from inside his chest. It was a fresher scented hug than he had anticipated, based on the state of the body armour. They must have cleaned up in the quinjet.

"Thanks for coming to get me," he said into Rhodey's shoulder. "I appreciate it."

"Always," Rhodey told him fiercely.

"You smell better than I was expecting," Clint quipped, pulling away first. "Tower's not the same without you, you know. Your children sulk. They refuse to cook me tasty meals."

"What? Bruce didn't mention that," Tony protested, almost giving into the temptation to lean back against Bucky for a moment, but shifting away instead to stand beside him.

Bucky smiled at him. "CAL started cooking again when he arrived. NOO-TRI had been taking care of me down in the workshop, but he refused to go up to the main level without you. We had to survive off of our own cooking for a few weeks, it was an eye opener."

"I'm glad we didn't all die of food poisoning," Clint admitted, leading the way to the table. "Mmmm, smells like lasagne."

Tony hung back a moment to speak with Bucky, although the scent of garlic bread was incredibly tempting. "Teddy bear slippers?" he asked.

"I notice that you're wearing them," Bucky grinned back. "Sinfully comfortable, aren't they?"

"People don't often buy me comfortable things, they seem to think that because I have money, they have to go big to impress me. Thank you. I like them."

Bucky reached out and pulled him into another hug. "I'm glad."

Tony gave into temptation and relaxed into the embrace, resting his head on the smooth metal plate at the top of Bucky's arm. "Don't freak out if I'm warmer than usual, I'll explain it all later," he promised.

"No freaking out, JARVIS gave me a run down. Uh, thank you, I guess? For setting my priority level so high."

"Awkward conversations can wait for later?" Tony suggested. "Lasagne now. I, ah, you're important, ok? So you get a high priority level." He dragged Bucky over to the table and pushed him into a seat. "Smells amazing CAL, thank you!" he called into the kitchen, receiving a pleased trill in acknowledgement. Rhodey handed him a full plate, and there was silence for a few minutes as everyone took the edge off of their appetite.

"So," Tony said, helping himself to more salad and another slice of garlic ciabatta. "Is Natasha still in New York? There was something about Hydra infiltrating Shield, is she ok?"

"She's fine," Bruce assured him. "She checks in daily."

"We have a system," Clint agreed through a mouthful of pasta. "Lemmie just finish this and I'll tell you everything, ok?"


	13. August

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your support and encouragement, they really have helped me to finish this story! The kudos and the reviews are all very precious to me, so thank you. I hope you enjoy this latest instalment!

_August_

The hugs became a frequent thing, which would have been fine, if only certain parts of Tony's brain hadn't been a little too invested in the way that they felt. He had a feeling that he wasn't the only one so affected, but above all else he did not want to push. Bucky had had far too many other people pushing their agenda on him over the course of his life, and Tony was determined to give him as much autonomy as possible.

That didn't stop him from enjoying the hugs though. The flirting was pretty fun too, and Bucky seemed to have stepped up his game since Tony had returned and accepted his teddy bear slippers. Still, life was pretty busy and sadly, fulfilling personal interactions were not on the top of the priority list.

The tower had to be reinforced, although most of the ground work for that had been covered by the Robot Army in his absence, with occasional help from Bucky or Rhodey when they had needed human assistance. Extremis, and it's effects on his body needed to be catalogued, and Bucky's innocence needed to be proven in a court of law so that he could walk around as a free man, as they all believed that he deserved to.

Unfortunately, that meant facing the conversation that he had successfully avoided for the past nine months, if he wanted the project to have a decent chance of success. He needed to talk to Pepper.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Bucky asked as he hesitated outside of the open elevator. "I don't even have to come in, I could just wait outside the door, and you can yell if you need me?"

"You'd terrify her assistant by lurking."

"Miss Pott's assistants left the premises twenty six minutes ago," JARVIS informed them both.

"See? I can be silent back up. I promise not to come in unless you need me."

Tony looked into sincere blue eyes and tried to think logically, although that particular tactic hadn't been working so well for him lately as Bucky seemed to take great delight in defying logical assumptions. Taking comfort from the thought that he would be just in the other room was ridiculous and childish and shouldn't make him feel better in the slightest because he was an adult, and he was perfectly capable of talking to his ex-fiancée.

"She hurt you," Bucky said quietly. "I know you're all up in your big analytical brain thinking about how ridiculous it is to be worried about talking to her, but she hurt you. I don't know all the details, but I know you, and you're amazing. You're the most amazing person I've ever met, and I've met some pretty awesome people in my time. I asked JARVIS a few things, while he was playing councillor, and I know enough to know that... That she couldn't accept all of you as you are, so you hid parts of yourself to better fit into what you thought was her ideal."

"That's surprisingly deep," Tony said sarcastically, knowing that he was lashing out unfairly but just wanting Bucky to stop talking with that sympathetic look on his face. "I didn't realise that you'd used the counselling program to invade my privacy. Shall I just assume that you know everything about every painful moment in my life?"

Bucky took a step backwards, hurt written across his face, and Tony immediately felt awful. He fisted his hands into his hair and tugged sharply. "I'm sorry," Bucky was saying. "I didn't mean it like that, and when JARVIS told me I figured that you were ok with me knowing. Uh, I'll just..."

"Don't go," Tony told the floor. "I shouldn't have said that to you."

He looked up to find that Bucky was several meters away, edging backwards with his metal arm tucked behind his back. Without thinking, he closed the gap, wrapping his fingers around the sniper's wrist and holding him in place.

"I lash out when I'm uncomfortable, this is an explanation not an excuse. It's not cool, I know. You were just trying to help. I just... Pepper is wonderful and I'm a fuck up, I've always been a fuck up and now I'm fucking it up with you too and I don't know how to change that, but yes I really would appreciate you backing me up down there, but even needing the backup in the first place is making me feel... Small. Childish. Weak."

Howard's voice echoed in his head. ' _Stark men are made of Iron_ '. He clenched his teeth and forced himself to look Bucky in the eyes while he waited for his answer.

"It's not weak to rely on other people, it takes a lot of strength to trust," Bucky said slowly. "Howard never did understand that."

"How did you know I was thinking of Howard?" Tony asked in astonishment.

"Sweetheart, that man has had his claws so deep into your head that I want to punch him." Bucky reached up with his metal hand and touched Tony's temple gently with cool fingers. Tony belatedly realised that he was still gripping his other wrist and let go. "I knew him too, remember?"

"You never talk about him."

Bucky shrugged. "Could be that I don't have much to say. You are better than him, in every way that counts."

Tony stared at him in astonishment, his thoughts scattered to the four winds. He had never believed anyone before when they compared him favourably to Howard, because of course they were lying. Howard had been a brilliant genius, loved by all. Tony could only hope to achieve enough to be remembered in the same sentence. All those who said otherwise hadn't known Howard, had only seen the pale imitation of his greatness that lived on in his son. But here was someone who had known Howard, who had spoken with him, saying that _Tony_ was better?

"Did I break you?" Bucky asked, warm amusement colouring his voice. He stepped closer, pulling Tony into a hug. "I hope that one day you can truly believe that you are better than Howard, because you are," he said into the inventor's ear. "Twice as fast, twice as brilliant, and at least five times nicer. Come on, let's go see your Ex about clearing my name."

"Yeah, we should... Do that." Tony agreed, following the other man into the elevator.

He could tell that JARVIS hadn't warned her, because she was packing up to leave when he tapped on the door. She froze, staring at him with an expression that he couldn't interpret on her face.

"Got a minute?" he asked, aiming for casual and aware that he missed it by a mile.

"Of course." She walked around the desk and sat on one of the armchairs she kept in the room for more informal meetings. He took the other one, and shook his head when she gestured towards the decanters on the sideboard. "I heard from Rhodey that they got you out. I was glad to hear that you were safe. How are you?"

"Fine. I, ah, I'm not here about me," he said, not wanting to give her the wrong impression. "I need you to get the legal department on a project to clear someone's name."

Pepper frowned and reached for her tablet to take notes. "All right. Is this person a criminal? If so, in how many countries?"

"He's a ghost story," Tony told her. "He's the longest serving prisoner of war in history. He was brainwashed and forced to assassinate people when he didn't even know his own name. I don't know... I don't know if anyone can actually prove what he did, but he did it and if we resurrect him we need to be sure that we can protect him."

"Resurrect him?" Pepper asked, looking up from the tablet. It was easy to read the curious question in her gaze. "So he's officially dead?"

"He is officially Missing in Action, Miss Potts," JARVIS interjected as Tony hesitated.

Pepper glanced up at the nearest speaker with a wry smile. "Talking to me again I see," she muttered. "Thank you JARVIS," she continued at a more normal volume. "How many people has he killed?"

"We're a bit fuzzy on the numbers," Tony admitted, earning himself an exasperated look, as he had expected.

"All right. What's his name?"

Tony took a deep breath. "James Barnes. James Buchanan Barnes."

Pepper looked at him for a moment, then back at her tablet, then back up at him.

"Born in 1917."

"Yup."

"Fell from a train."

"That he did."

"What?"

"Evil Nazi Scientists," Tony said as solemnly as he could. Pepper paused a moment, and then put the tablet on the glass table beside her. She kicked off her high heels and padded to the sideboard in her stockings, where she poured herself a large measure of gin and added a twist of lime. She considered the glass for a moment, and then swallowed half of it before returning to her seat with the rest. He closed his eyes as the movement caused her familiar perfume to wash over him and contemplated asking Bucky to come into the room. He had never felt so alone in her presence before.

"Ok. Well, on the plus side, no one knows that he was a brainwashed assassin. You're right that we need a contingency plan in case the truth comes out." Pepper wasn't looking at him, her eyes fixed on the tablet as she tapped down notes. Her bright hair was falling out of the elegant chignon she had twisted it into that morning, and once upon a time he would have wanted to reach out and tuck it behind her ear. He felt no such compulsion now.

"Or maybe we just tell the truth, that way they can't hold it over our heads," he suggested. "It worked with Iron Man."

"Ok." She stared into her glass for a long moment. "Can I meet him?"

Tony considered it for a long moment. "Maybe next time."

Pepper narrowed her eyes. "Did he help to rescue you?" she asked. "I knew that James was being strange about it, is that why?"

Tony sighed and regretted not having a drink when she'd offered him one. "Yes, he did. It was Clint, Rhodey, Bucky, TRI- never mind. Yes he helped."

Pepper smiled sadly. "Still keeping secrets, and I don't even have the right to ask anymore," she sighed. "All right. I'll look into it, get an idea of the lay of the land. Can you give me a list of the most high profile victims? We can meet again around this time tomorrow, if he agrees to meet me."

"He will, or at least I think he will," Tony amended hastily. "He's a gentleman. Uh... I can give you two high profile kills right now, but you won't like it."

Pepper gripped her glass a little tighter and looked him in the eye. "All right."

"Howard and Maria Stark."

Pepper's pale skin blanched further and she visibly stiffened in her seat. After a long moment she swallowed the last of her drink and sat it carefully on the table.

"It wasn't his fault," Tony explained once she met his eyes again, pushing himself to his feet. "You don't blame the gun for being fired, and that is all he was in this scenario. I'll have JARVIS release the files to you. They're... A difficult read."

Pepper nodded, watching him carefully. "Will that be all, Mr Stark?" she asked quietly. Tony opened his mouth to reply, but the words stuck in his throat. He shook his head and turned, not wanting to read whatever it was her eyes were showing, and walked to the door. Things were not the same, he was not the same, and he wasn't sure what he wanted, but he knew that falling into the same old rut wouldn't do him any good anymore. Tony left the room without looking back.

Bucky was waiting for him, lounging against the wall opposite the windows with his thumbs through his belt loops. He looked up through his eyelashes and smiled when he saw Tony.

"You look like a pin up," the billionaire told him, reaching out to hook his arm around Bucky's metal elbow and pulling him in the direction of the elevators.

"Hmmm, I guess I wouldn't mind being pinned," Bucky mused with a wink. Tony stared at him for a moment, and then burst out laughing.

"C'mon, before she comes out here to see what the noise is about," he gasped, pushing the former assassin through the doors that JARVIS had opened for them.

Bucky resumed his pose against the glass wall of the elevator car, and Tony took a quick moment to appreciate it before he focused on the topic at hand. "Were you listening in?" he asked.

Bucky shrugged. "JARVIS offered but... I trust you. And it was a private moment between you and your ex, I didn't want to intrude."

Tony wasn't sure that he could have contained his curiosity had he been in Bucky's shoes, but then he already knew that they were very different people. "All right then. She wants to meet you tomorrow. J, can you please release the redacted Winter Soldier File to Pepper's tablet? Make it a burn after reading thing, she can always ask for another copy if she thinks she needs it."

"I have sent the file, Sir," JARVIS confirmed. "I will dedicate a subroutine to monitor Miss Potts' tablet until the file is safely removed."

"Good plan. Better plan, tell her she also can't take it out of the building. The last thing we need is for that file to somehow get released to the general public, even if we go with the whole truth plan."

"What truth plan?" Bucky asked, letting Tony lead the way into the common room. "Smells good CAL!" he called into the kitchen as they walked past, receiving a pleased chirp in response.

"If we tell them the truth first off, they can't blackmail us with it later," Tony explained. "I told the world I was Iron Man as soon as they asked, no messing around with secret identities. I think the same thing might work here."

Bucky looked doubtful. "Releasing my full kill list to the public isn't going to do anything other than make me look like a monster," he objected. "I get the logic here, but I think the circumstances are too different."

"No, no, we don't release everything," Tony was quick to refute. "I mean, we tell them that you were captured, we tell them about the brainwashing, and we tell them that they used you as an assassin - your sniper record for the US Army is public, everyone knows that you're the best sharpshooter they ever had."

"My record still stands?" Bucky asked, astonishment written all over his face.

"It does, Sargent Barnes," JARVIS confirmed. "A young Corporal came close in 2005, but you are still the record holder."

"Huh. Thanks JARVIS. So, we tell them the truth but not the whole truth?"

Tony shrugged. "I'm thinking that we play up the brainwashing angle, and tell them about my parents, because that way I get to make a big speech forgiving you, and that'll set a precedent. We keep the whole JFK thing quiet of course, there are already seventeen different conspiracy theories there. If anyone suggests that it was you, people will think they're jumping on the bandwagon and won't take it seriously."

Clint wandered into the common room, yawning and stretching. He was wearing Stark Industries sweatpants and a purple t-shirt with a hole in the hem, and his hair was flat on the left side of his head and sticking up wildly on the other. "Hey guys. How's it hanging? Afternoon naps after all night surveillance are awesome."

"Who were you surveying?" Tony asked at the same time as Bucky said "Tony went to see Pepper."

Clint stopped dead and blinked at them. "Tony went to see Pepper?" the blond immediately frowned and made a beeline for Tony, pulling him up out of his seat and wrapping him up in a hug. "Good for you, sorry I wasn't there to back you up. You ok?"

"I had back up," Tony grumbled, although he accepted the hug nethertheless. Clint let him go before it got awkward, and flopped down on the sofa, stifling another yawn.

"I was working with JARVIS to help Tasha out with some remote surveillance in Washington," he explained after a moment. "Think we identified a little group of Hydra moles. The whole thing is going to blow up in a big way in the next few days. Loyal agents are being identified, Hydra sympathisers are being tagged and monitored by the loyal agents. Some bases are completely overrun so we've moved out the critical supplies - hopefully without them noticing - and we're saving those till later. The big problem now is those helicarriers, but thanks to Tony refusing to co-operate, they're still having trouble with the engines."

"We need to do something about Zola as well," Bucky growled. "I have no idea how that monster is still alive."

"He's an AI now, so he's not technically alive anymore," Clint told him, eyes widening as Bucky narrowed his eyes in a menacing glare. "Hey! I only found out today, I haven't been keeping it from you. Agent 13 figured it out and sent me an encrypted message."

"A malignant AI, huh? Sounds like something I should be dealing with," Tony decided. "Please send me everything you have on the AI, and I'll see if I can hack him out of existence remotely, or confine him at his source servers at least. JARVIS, are you ok to help with this? I know killing another AI might be a little, well, awkward for you."

"Zola assisted in your kidnap and torture, did he not Sir?"

Tony chewed at his lip, not sure he was comfortable with where this was going. "He did, but..."

"I will assist you in confining him to his source servers, and I will ensure that he is kept there," his AI decided. "I do not know how I would feel about... Wiping another sentient out of existence. You would have to adjust my programming for me to even properly contemplate the task."

"I'm not going to adjust your programming, JARVIS," Tony assured him. "I'd prefer that you not kill anyone as well. Help me find and contain him, and then we'll take it from there."

"This is how Skynet starts," Clint stage whispered to Bucky, who frowned at him in confusion.

"I don't understand that reference."

"What? Ok, movie night after dinner. No excuses. CAL, is dinner ready yet? I'm starving!"

 

*

 

Tony had a stomach full of butterflies as he and Bucky took the elevator down to speak with Pepper, and he couldn't figure out exactly what he was nervous about. Was he worried that they would get along, as she did with Rhodey, or was he worried that they would fall immediately into icy politeness? Or was it himself that he was worried about, how he would react to seeing them in the same room, Bucky no longer something secret, no longer just for him, but taking steps to be out there, interacting with the rest of the world?

"It's going to be fine, I promise not to hate her on sight for hurting you."

"She was hurt too," Tony muttered. "I mean, I know you're my friend not hers, but I don't think this has been particularly easy on her either. I guess it was a good thing that I signed everything over to her after the palladium incident, or I wouldn't have been able to avoid her for so long."

"Did you ever consider taking back the reigns?" Bucky asked as the doors opened on Pepper's floor.

Tony shook his head. "I'm happy with her running it, I'm just the owner now. It's easier all round, it means that I get to focus on things that actually make me happy. Fully embrace the mantle of eccentric billionaire. Come on, best not keep her waiting."

The first thing he noticed on pushing open the heavy doors to the CEO office was that Pepper's eyes were red. She stood so quickly when the door opened that she nearly lost her balance and had to quickly rest a hand on the corner of her desk to steady herself.

"Tony, Sargent Barnes. Would... Would you like a drink?"

"Have you been crying?" Tony demanded, throwing protocol out the window. She should be used to that by now, he reasoned.

Pepper squared her shoulders and nodded. "The file you sent... Wasn't a comfortable read."

"You've been crying over me, Miz Potts?" Tony didn't need to look at Bucky to know that he was frowning at Pepper in bemusement.

"Of course I have," she snapped back with a hint of her usual temper. "If anyone deserves my tears it's you." She shook her head and lead the way over to the armchairs, tablet in hand. "Please have a seat, we have a lot to talk about."

Tony sat back as she began to take Bucky through the plan that she had put together, telling the public just enough of the truth to gather their sympathy while at the same time building a strong case to exonerate him of all crimes committed under Hydra's control without referencing more than the bare minimum of the assassinations.

The butterflies had flown and an odd calm had settled over him in their place. He was able to look at Pepper without the shadows of the past that had weighted heavily on him the day before. He glanced at Bucky, who was nodding as he followed along, and felt a pleased warmth spread through his chest that had nothing to do with extremis.

He no longer had any doubts. Seeing the two of them interacting in the same room, he knew absolutely which one he wanted to stand beside, no matter the setting.

 

*

 

"What is this?" Tony asked a few days later. They were in the workshop, Bucky deep in the engine bay of a mustang Tony had unearthed from the back of the collection that needed a new gearbox.

"What's what?" Bucky asked, emerging with smears of grease all over his white t-shirt. He dropped a handful of nuts onto the nearest workbench.

Tony waved the envelope that he had found lying casually next to the coffee machine at him. It had his name on it in suspiciously familiar cursive. "Boxing tickets! I know they're from you, don't play the innocent."

"You like boxing," Bucky replied. "And I thought, well, I thought maybe we could figure out a fancy disguise and go out together."

Something in the way that he stood and the way that he said it tipped Tony off. "Is... Is this a date?" he asked, not sure if he was anxious or hopeful.

Bucky swallowed. "Only if you want it to be," he replied with steely determination.

"Oh, I do," Tony was quick to assure him. "But don't you-"

"Then it's a date," Bucky interrupted him. "Don't overthink it. Is there a 12mm socket over there? I think DUM-E knocked it off the dash."


	14. September

_September_

Shield was almost unrecognisable after the Hydra clean out, but Tony couldn't bring himself to consider that a bad thing, per se. Clint and Natasha were safely ensconced in the Tower, and Steve was making noises about moving back to New York after his pretty nurse of a neighbour turned out to be the Agent 13 that Clint had been in contact with and the entire strike team that he had been running missions with were revealed to be Hydra.

There was a long way to go, the evil organisation with it's strange octopus obsession had had it's tentacles in a lot of places, but the parties that Tony was still occasionally attending with 'Natalie Rushman' were feeling a lot cleaner than they had been at the beginning of the year. Plus he knew that he would return home to find Bucky hanging out in the lab with the robots, sketching portraits, playing catch or on one notable occasion, arranging a scavenger hunt.

MAG had won by a mile.

Tony hadn't realised when he stopped missing Pepper's presence in his life, but he was self aware enough to know that it had been months now. Bucky was everything he had selfishly wished Pepper had been; someone for him, not for the adoring masses. He was smart and brave and loved technology and the robots, treating them as family in a way that Pepper had never quite managed.

Tony was proud of the progress that he had made with JARVIS' help, happy to stand at his side, and he had never been filled with anticipation before a press conference the way that he was now. He took a moment to straighten Bucky's bow tie and tuck an errant strand of hair behind his ear. "You look great, and they're going to love you."

Bucky flashed him a nervous half grin. "I'm getting some memories of the press tour with Stevie pushing through," he admitted.

"Headache?" Tony asked, giving into the need to smooth his thumb against Bucky's temple.

"Not too bad, maybe we can ask them to tone down the flash photography?"

"I've got a better idea," Tony said, pulling a spare pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and handing them over. His favourite red tinted pair were already on his nose. "These should help. I'll ask them to wait to take photos until the end, but chances are they won't listen."

He shifted closer to the stage to find out where Pepper was in her opening statement just as she gave him a warning glance.

"Showtime," Bucky muttered.

They stepped forward together, and Tony was glad to find that the shock of their appearance lessened the strobe effect he usually endured at the beginning of a press conference.

"Hi everyone. Can I ask please that you refrain from taking photos till the end, thank you. Or if you absolutely must, disable the flash. If you don't know how to disable the flash on your camera, I'll have to question your credentials as a professional photographer, classify you as some sort of imposter and have you removed from the room. Clear? Great." There was a flurry of activity as the photographers scattered around the room all hastily adjusted their cameras.

"As Miss Potts has already explained to you, Sargent James Buchanan Barnes was recently rescued from long term incarceration by a terrorist organisation. This organisation is extremely hostile to not only the United States, but the free world, and I am working with the other Avengers and the organisation known as Shield to neutralise them as quickly as possible.

"During his incarceration, Sargent Barnes was tortured, brainwashed, and had his memory wiped on multiple occasions. He does not remember much of his time there, and for that I for one am glad. I remember my time in Afghanistan all too well. Sargent Barnes was forced to commit actions that he would have vehlemtly refused to take part in had he been able. One of those actions resulted in the death of my parents, Howard and Maria Stark."

Tony paused to allow his audience to react to that little fact. Beside him Bucky stiffened, so Tony took advantage of the cover offered by the wooden podium to lace their fingers together.

"I want to make it clear to you all, now, that I do not blame Sargent Barnes for the death of my parents, any more than I would blame a gun for being fired. At the time he was considered a tool, an Asset, by those who had captured him, and he had about as much free will as a toaster. The Avengers fully support Sargent Barnes in his recovery, and Stark industries legal department are currently liaising with the US government to have him reinstated as 'alive'. Further information is included in a pack that will be given to you now. Sargent Barnes and I will return in fifteen minutes to answer any questions. Thank you."

The room was oddly silent as they turned to walk back behind the curtain, Tony remembering at the last second to let go of Bucky's hand before he accidentally caused a scandal and tilted the spotlight away from where they intended it to shine.

"Are you ok?" He asked Bucky as soon as they were out of site.

"I should be asking you that," the former assassin protested. "You did all the talking there."

Tony waved a dismissive hand. "I'm used to it. Pepper, what do you think?"

The redhead stepped a little closer and nodded at both of them. "Seemed to go ok, no one shouted an interruption and they're all reading intently. Hopefully we'll have a nice, civilised press conference for once."

"That may be too much to hope for. Want to stop for a hot dog on the way home? Or maybe a burger?"

Bucky nodded thoughtfully. "I could go for a cheeseburger," he admitted. "I was too tense to eat much lunch."

Pepper's phone vibrated in her hand and she quickly excused herself. Tony wanted to peek around the edge of the curtain to take a look at the reporters, but he knew that if they spotted him it would look like he cared about their reaction, and he needed to give them the impression that he didn't.

"How's the arm?" he asked instead, grinning as Bucky lifted his new, Stark-made appendage and wiggled his fingers.

"Perfect, so much lighter than the old one," Bucky said with a grin. "I can feel the damage to my muscles healing, you know? Everything feels stronger and easier. Plus I'm finally rid of the red star."

"I still say that you should have let me carve an arc reactor into the shoulder joint. It's powered by one after all," Tony pouted, although they both knew that he had only been half serious when he suggested it in the first place.

"Wouldn't want people to mistake me for your property," Bucky teased. "Besides, it's not like you can tell there's an arc reactor in my bicep."

"You'll have to keep up with those gym workouts or those guns will be uneven."

The fifteen minutes passed quickly as they talked, and before he was quite ready for it, his watch beeped as JARVIS reminded him that it was time to step back out in front of the cameras.

"Right, I hope you found the package we included enlightening. First question please, woman on the left."

"Mr Stark, you look considerably more youthful than the last time you gave a press conference, would you care to explain?" the smartly dressed brunette said promptly into the microphone an assistant had passed her.

Tony blinked in shock, and cursed himself for not thinking of that earlier. "I, ah, I'll be taking questions specific to the situation with Sargent Barnes at this time. My beauty regime is not to be subject to scrutiny!" He hoped that there would at least be a weak laugh over his frantic attempt at a joke, but the room was quiet a moment as the brunette passed the microphone along the row, frowning thoughtfully.

"Sargent Barnes, welcome back to the land of the living. What's your favourite thing about the future?"

Bucky took a deep breath and reached for Tony's hand again behind the podium. "Definitely Tony's robots, they're amazing," he told the room. "I was always a big fan of science fiction back in the day, and I was at the first Stark Expo. It's been great seeing how far technology has come, and all the fantastic things that Tony is able to do with it."

Bucky turned to Tony as he finished and the billionaire couldn't help the beaming smile that spread across his cheeks. He hadn't expected such a wordy reply, but then Bucky had mentioned remembering the press tour in the forties. He also hadn't expected Bucky to be so flattering in public, Pepper had always downplayed his impact because he apparently had 'a big enough ego without additional encouragement'.

"I understand that you were not in control of your actions at the time," the next reporter started, wiping the smile from Tony's face. "But how did you react once you realised that you'd killed your friend?"

Bucky shook his head. "I was devastated when I realised what they had made my body do," he said, carefully disassociating himself from his actions as they had agreed. "I never wanted to hurt anyone, it should be common knowledge by now that I was drafted. I wanted to stay home and look after Stevie. War changed my outlook a little, as wars tend to do, but I still didn't want to be a killer. When I remembered killing Howard and Maria, I felt sick. Tony and I had an argument about it actually, because I thought I should leave."

"I had another opinion," Tony interjected.

Bucky swallowed hard. "But... I guess there's one thing that you should all know, now that you know the story," he continued. "Howard Stark and I were not friends. History books might have painted a different picture, I get that. However, I hope you'll all take the word of the guy that was actually there. Howard was friendly with Steve, sure, but he didn't spend a whole lotta time with the rest of the Howlies, not even with the one that wanted to know how all his tech worked. I got it, it was war and we were all busy. He didn't get scheduled downtime like the rest of us, he was on the go all the time. So I feel bad about killing him, sure I do, but I actually feel worse about Maria Stark."

"Could you elaborate on that please?" asked the same reporter, a thin brown haired young man with freckles on his nose.

Bucky shifted a little and Tony squeezed his hand harder. "Howard knew he was a target, he had to," he explained. "He was very involved with Shield, he was inventing dangerous things, his company were manufacturing weapons. His work put himself, and by extension his wife and son, in danger. He was a genius, he knew the risks." He glanced sideways at Tony, who was biting his lip not to interject and point out how heartlessly arrogant his father had been as well. "Maria, on the other hand, did not deserve to die. I don't quite remember the details, a lot of the time I wasn't told much at all, but I do remember that I had to retrieve a case from that car and leave no witnesses. There are a lot of what if's, and my therapist says that it isn't productive to dwell on them so I try not to. But consider this please, as you write about this. Howard Stark would have known that what was in that case was dangerous, and he chose to drive with it in the trunk of his car regardless. So yes, I feel worse about Maria Stark, and I think I always will."

Tony swallowed around a lump in his throat and it was Bucky's turn to squeeze his fingers. "Next question?"

The press conference seemed to go on for hours, although Tony knew for a fact that they'd allowed 45 minutes for questions. They drove to the nearest Burger King for cheeseburgers and ate them sitting in the car in the parking lot, trusting the tinted windows to keep them anonymous.

"I think extremis has kicked my metabolism up a notch," Tony grumbled as he reached for a third burger. "I really do have to get around to doing those tests."

"Probably best to keep a low profile for a few days now that we've dropped the bombshell on the press," Bucky pointed out. "You should hole up in the lab with Bruce and let him run those tests he's been mentioning at dinner."

Tony sighed. "I guess it can't be avoided forever," he agreed. "At least it's only Bruce. It was a rookie mistake, not putting some age lines back on my face with makeup before I went out there."

Bucky shrugged. "To be fair, none of us thought of it. You just look like you to me."

"I guess Pepper had the same problem, she's usually more on the ball than that. Are there any more fries in the bag?"

Bucky unfolded the brown paper and peered in. "Two more servings, so we don't have to share," he reported, fishing them out. "So, now that we have consumed a frankly alarming amount of junk food, back to the tower?"

Tony nodded. "Remember to pretend to CAL and NOO-TRI that this never happened, it might upset them."

Bucky grinned, scooping the last few fries into his mouth and balling up the container with his metal fist. "Wouldn't dream of it," he smiled, before distracting Tony thoroughly as he licked salt and grease from his fingers.

*

They drove into the executive carpark underneath the Tower and took the elevator up to the common room.

"Good job guys," Clint called from the sofa as the doors opened. "You're trending on twitter."

"We are?" Tony asked with an amused grin. "Positive or negative?"

"Mostly positive," Natasha told them. She and Clint were sitting at opposite ends of the main sofa as they reviewed the holographic display JARVIS had projected on the coffee table for them. "The reporters must have started publishing teasers before they even got back to the office, looking at the timestamps. The photos come over well, no one has picked up on the hand holding yet."

"You can tell we're holding hands?" Bucky asked, alarmed. He bent over the table and JARVIS helpfully projected an array of photographs for him over the top of the twitter feeds.

"Chill, most people wouldn't have noticed," Clint said dismissively. "It's just that we know how you usually stand. Spies, remember? Plus we might have been looking out for it, you know, after the incident in the kitchen last week."

"It was one kiss!" Bucky said defensively, at the same time as Tony protested "He gave me coffee!"

The billionaire poked the archer in the back of the head. "You've offered to marry me when I gave you coffee last month, you don't get to tease about one little kiss," he grumbled with a sideways glance at Bucky. He hoped that the sniper wasn't too put out about the friendly teasing, he had been enjoying the new casual intimacy that had sprung up between them since their successful first date.

"Clint," Natasha reproved, pushing the images to on side with a careless sweep of her pale fingers. "Focus. Twitter. Facebook. Read the comments section."

"Never read the comments section," Clint muttered, but he pulled a tablet out from behind a sofa cushion and opened the New York Times website.

"Pepper left a message," the redhead said next, looking seriously up at Tony. "She's waiting for you in her office. Both of you, I think."

Tony nodded and squared his shoulders. "Up for the admin level during office hours?" he asked Bucky. "It'll be a bit noisier than before, but not by much. Everyone is very well behaved on that level, I used to be the odd one out."

Tony did his best not to be frustrated at Pepper's timing as they went back down again. He had been looking forward to sitting on the couch together and relaxing after the press conference, regaining some equilibrium before heading down to see Bruce. Maybe playing fetch with ROVER and MOVER. Still, it wasn't Pepper's fault that the world carried on when he wanted a moment to himself, and he tried to push his irritation at the situation away so that it didn't colour his interactions with her. They were on shaky enough ground as it was.

"Are you ok?" Bucky asked, reaching out to lay his flesh hand on Tony's shoulder. "You're even tenser than last time. We can always tell her no, see her another time."

Tony shook his head. "No, I'm just annoyed that we're not sitting on the sofa together reading through the twitter feeds with Clint and Natasha," he sighed. "It's a stupid thing to be irritated about, nothing to do with Pepper. It's fine, we have plenty of time to relax later, right?"

"Of course we do, but if you want to go relax now we can."

Strangely, Bucky offering him an out made him feel a little better, and he smiled as he ducked his head to press his cheek against the back of Bucky's hand. "Seriously, it's fine," he said.

The sincerity in his tone must have convinced the super soldier, who fell into step with him as they exited the elevator. The floor was full of wooden accents and glass panel walls, but there were enough columns and large potted plants that it wasn't immediately obvious who had exited the elevator. The large wooden doors of the executive office were propped open, and he could see Pepper's silhouette against the bright blue autumn sky.

A murmur of surprise broke out as they walked and more of the staff spotted them, but Tony kept looking straight ahead, not wanting to accidentally give anyone the excuse to engage him in a conversation. He kicked at the left hand door wedge as he passed it and Bucky did the same with the right, the heavy doors swinging closed behind them.

"Tony, Sargent Barnes, thank you for coming down," Pepper said with a careful smile. "The reaction to the press conference seems to have been very favourable."

"Natasha says that we're trending on twitter," Bucky told her. "I assumed from her tone that this was a good thing."

"When I came back I had an update from the legal department, I am pleased to confirm that you have officially been reinstated as alive, and I have your identification documents here." Pepper pulled a plain manila envelope from the desk drawer and handed it over. "They have agreed to pay you a percentage of back pay, it's a similar deal to the one that Shield worked out for Captain Rogers, and at this time they are not holding you responsible for any of the acts Hydra forced you to commit."

"Is that likely to change?" Bucky asked as he opened the envelope.

"If it does, the legal team are prepared to react immediately," Pepper assured him. "It would be easier if your position with regard to the Avengers Initiative was clearer, had you thought about creating a formal arrangement or possibly joining the team?"

Bucky frowned down at the passport he had just opened, before glancing up at Tony. "What's your position?" he asked. "With regard to the Avengers, I mean."

Tony shrugged. "Officially I'm a consultant and I develop the weapons that the team use in that capacity. Shield used to pay me for the designs that I came up with for their agents, but given the recent circumstances I have terminated that contract until I'm convinced that no Stark tech can fall into the hands of Hydra. Oh, and the Maria Stark Foundation usually funds a percentage of the clean up costs if the Avengers cause damage on US soil."

"What about Natasha and Clint?"

"They're Level 6 Shield agents assigned to the Avengers Initiative. Bruce is also officially a consultant, James Rhodes is on loan from the Military. Steve Rogers is the only official full time Avenger at this point, and Thor is considered an ambassador from Asgard."

Bucky nodded. "All right. Can you get me a copy of the consultant paperwork that Bruce signed? I'd also like to see Steve's contract, or the non-classified version of it that they'd have me sign if I did become a full time Avenger. I don't consider myself part of the military any more, and I have no intention of joining Shield, so those seem to be my options."

"Or you could retire," Tony couldn't help pointing out.

Bucky snorted and shook his head. "You need someone to watch your back, and I'd like to be able to do it," he said. "Besides, if I can do some good with the skills that Hydra burnt into my brain... You know how it is. Gotta try to balance the books somehow."

"I'll have the contracts to you in the morning," Pepper promised.

Bucky nodded his thanks. "Is that everything?"

"Yes, unless you had any questions for me?"

Bucky shook his head and glanced at Tony, who shrugged. "Call us if you need us for anything," he told his CEO, turning to lead the way out of the room.

He held back his grin until they were safe in the privacy of the elevator. "You want to Avenge stuff with me? Take us to the lab please JARVIS."

"What did you think I was going to do?" Bucky asked, rolling his eyes. "I can't hide in the tower imposing on your hospitality forever, Tony."

"For the record, I would have been fine with that," the billionaire assured him as the doors opened on the lab.

Bucky passed the manilla folder to U, who had rolled forward to greet them. "Would you put that safe in my room please?" he asked the robot, who whirred her assent as she sped into the lift before JARVIS closed the doors. "So, what are we working on?"

Tony shrugged. "I know I need to go see Bruce about extremis, but I just wanted a bit of time to psych myself up for that particular experience. I didn't really have anything planned though. Want to work on the car or help me with FLAVOR? I think he did himself a bit of damage when he airlifted TRIPLE-R out of the Hydra base. FIX-IT has already cleaned all the bug splatter off of him."

Bucky stepped closer and pressed their lips together in a chaste kiss. "Let's get FLAVOR fully operational."

He stepped away to rummage through the nearest workbench for a pair of gloves, and Tony allowed himself a moment to just feel lucky. He was safe in his lab, surrounded by his misfit family. He had a relationship that included working together with no head-butting or complaining, and he hadn't had anything stronger than beer in two weeks. He was happier than he remembered being in a long time, and he knew that a large part of that was due to the man standing in front of him, now holding a crosshead screwdriver and staring at him quizzically.

"Are you ok?"

"I've never been better," Tony replied sincerely, unable to help the smile that spread across his cheeks. "Come on, we've got a drone to fix!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! Thank you to everyone who stuck with me throughout, your words of encouragement and kudos kept me going. I've accidentally stumbled across my original notes for this story, and I am astonished at how off course I went! I'm going to reproduce them below, so you get a glimpse of what might have been:
> 
> September - Tony + Pepper Engaged  
> October - Fundraising party  
> November (breakup) - Pepper realises Tony is still building Iron Man suits.  
> December - Tony drinks and makes lots of small robots (one of them asks questions about the Iron Legion project and Tony decides to scrap the whole thing? / Tony reviews the Ultron program over Xmas and decides that the data is flawed).  
> January - Bruce & Natasha stage an awkward intervention. Tony is reminded that he has a team even if he doesn't have a Pepper.  
> February - Clint proposes a new beginning at Stark Mansion. Tony agrees (secret train between the two!) Steve + Sam bring Bucky home.
> 
> Although I love the finished version of Falling Petals, part of me is sad that I completely forgot that I wanted a secret underground train between Stark Mansion and the Tower.


End file.
